Formula One and Beyond

by Max Mosley

  In the end, I decided on a U2, which was very similar to the racing version of the Lotus 7 and competed in the same category, known as Clubmans Sports Cars. I bought a second-hand rolling chassis (a complete car but with no engine). I had decided to race in the 1.5 litre class, so now had to source an engine. A cousin had an interest in a garage run by a former Team Lotus mechanic, Len Street, and I persuaded Len to build and install one for me. I took it for a test at Silverstone and the experience was amazing – so much faster and more sensitive than any road car I had driven, even the 1961 Lotus Elite bought from Rodney Bloor.

  My first race was at Snetterton. I knew no one in the motor racing world and couldn’t afford to take anyone with me from Len Street’s garage, so I set off on my own. I managed to persuade the scrutineers (the officials who check cars to make sure they are not dangerous or outside the regulations) to start the engine when I was unable to get it going myself.

  After a push-start at the beginning of the race, I was going round thinking I might at least set fastest lap. Then the race leaders came round to lap me. I was astonished how much faster than me they were. They were driving flat out through a corner where I was braking and changing down. It was a learning year of beginning to understand the difference between being quick on the roads and racing, even at club level.

  Later that season, standing among the other drivers at Goodwood looking at the list of practice times, I heard one say, ‘Max Mosley, he must be a relation of . . .’ and I waited for the inevitable, only to hear him continue ‘. . . Alf Moseley, the coach builder from Leicester.’ I realised here was a whole new world. No one knew about my background and, if anyone did, they wouldn’t care. It was the first time I felt that whatever interest there might be was about me rather than my family. If I could do something in motor racing my antecedents would probably not come into it.

  As I got to know other competitors in the Clubmans Sports Car category, my understanding of what was required for success grew. One of the leading drivers introduced me to David Reeves, who ran Meadspeed Racing from a small lock-up in Walthamstow, preparing cars for club racing. He was virtually a one-man band but had two part-time employees who started to accompany me to the races. One of them, Colin Gardner, now runs a successful chauffeur-driven car business in Farnham. The other, Bob Hornegold, went on to build golf courses all over the world and has since become one of the UK’s leading anglers. A third helper was Gordon Anstey, who could not hear or speak but had an uncanny understanding of racing car suspension.

  David realised very quickly that my car needed to be properly set up if it was to perform at its best. Setting up a car was a new concept for me, but I was happy to follow his advice. We took the U2 to Major Arthur Mallock’s workshop near Northampton to be adjusted. He was the originator and designer of the U2 make, a great figure in club racing and a very talented engineer. For reasons of cost, the major components of the U2 came mainly from scrap road cars which were attached to a space frame of Mallock’s design. As part of the setting-up process, it was important to get the corner weights right and Mallock would do this wheel by wheel using bathroom scales, with blocks of wood under the other three wheels to keep the car level. If the scales gave an unwanted reading he would kick them until it was correct. If this failed, more basic adjustments were made either to the scales or to the car. Of course today this is all done with rather more sophisticated instruments.

  I ran out of money during the 1966 season and had to borrow to keep going. The winter was spent getting ready for 1967 and again teaching in the evenings to earn money for racing. Every Saturday I went over to Walthamstow to work on a new car in the Meadspeed workshop. I was not much use but could make small metal components on the lathe.

  We went to John Young for the engine. He had a very successful business, preparing racing Ford Anglias with his brother Mike from a garage behind the Ford dealership in Ilford, east London. John could tune Weber carburettors by ear without any instrument, and like aerospace engineers of the period he always wore a white boiler suit with a brass buckle. This he would unconsciously polish with his sleeve while explaining how to support the floats in a Weber carburettor during transit. I could not afford an engine with a steel (as opposed to production) crankshaft, but John’s talent went a long way to making up for this.

  I went back to Snetterton for my first race in 1967 and won, albeit narrowly, with two cars close behind. It was a great feeling after all the work we had put in. It began a season of victories and class lap records, with Colin Gardner and Bob Hornegold assisting at the races. Although the U2 was basically a two-seater, I was able to make it comply with the letter of the then International Formula Two (single seat) rules, so I entered it in a major Formula Two race at Crystal Palace. I had to overcome objections from the officials, who took one look at it and said: ‘You can’t bring that thing in here.’ But here again my work at the Bar proved useful: armed with the rule book, I was able to convince them they had to accept it. Even so, the Autosport report, written by Simon Taylor, said: ‘Max Mosley was in a Meadspeed-entered U2 which had a pushrod 1500cc Ford engine – hardly the car to be found on an International F2 grid!’

  One of the great attractions of Formula Two in those days was the presence of Formula One drivers, who would take part if there was no Grand Prix that weekend. Several I had seen racing in Formula One, including my first race as a spectator in 1961, were at the Crystal Palace event. Driving on the circuit with several Formula One stars in a wholly inappropriate car was another significant learning curve. Mine was much slower than the proper Formula Two cars, quite apart from my lack of experience and skill. I had asked Bruce McLaren, who was driving one of his own cars, for some advice on keeping out of the way. ‘Always stay where you are and let them go round you,’ he said. ‘Don’t try to move out of the way at the last moment because of the risk of a misunderstanding.’

  The most intriguing lesson came from observing the big names doing most of their braking in the entrance to the corner, putting the brakes on at the point where I was thinking about taking them off. We practised on the Saturday at Crystal Palace for the race on the Monday, which gave me the chance to put the mudguards back on my U2 and compete at Brands Hatch in an ordinary club race on the Sunday. Applying what I had learned the previous day, I took 1.6 seconds off the class lap record.

  This made me realise I really wanted to have a go at the big time. Jean’s employer had a friend who knew Ken Tyrrell and kindly invited us to his house to meet the great man. Ken gave me a lot of good advice, including a warning about how fast Formula Two was – even Jacky Ickx, who had just started driving for him, had been surprised. Neither of us had a clue that our paths would cross again in a big way in just over two years. Even when I had disagreements with him later on, I never forgot how generous he had been to take time and trouble when I had been a small-time club driver and a complete nonentity.

  Graham Hill did something similar when I sought his advice before going out on the Nürburgring in my Formula Two car a year or so later. Like Ken, he had no idea that I might one day become significant in motor racing, but nevertheless took a great deal of trouble to prepare me for the notorious ’Ring. Like Ken, he did it as a pure act of kindness and I tried always to follow their example when people sought my advice.

  Being the only one in chambers that August, I was briefed in a major trademark case. My application in the High Court was successful and I was kept on in what became a very big case, which allowed me to begin to earn reasonable money at the Bar. At last I was able to give up teaching in the evenings, Jean could stop work and I could devote even more time to racing. Fortunately, a discerning Inland Revenue official allowed me to set my racing costs against my Bar earnings, ruling that my participation in the sport was ‘an adventure in the nature of a trade’. Without his far-sighted judgment, the cost of competing would almost certainly have ended my involvement in motor sport before it really began.

  4

  INTER
NATIONAL FORMULA TWO

  After the Crystal Palace experience, I decided I absolutely had to try to get a real Formula Two car for 1968 and go racing internationally. By autumn 1967, I was earning enough to buy a new Brabham BT23C from Frank Williams, then already established as a top racing car dealer. I got further backing from a cousin, Henrietta Guinness, supervised by her trustees. She had come with Jean and me to a club race at Mallory Park (which I won) and thought it all brilliant. ‘Wow! I’m going to enter a Lamborghini at Indianapolis!’ she said. I suggested we go for something slightly more modest to begin with.

  Early in 1968, I collected the car from the Brabham factory. Ron Tauranac, the designer responsible for the Brabham cars, came out of his office to say hello and for me it was like meeting the Pope. I asked him about the rollover bar, which didn’t look strong enough to protect the driver if the car turned over. He explained it wasn’t meant to – it was simply to pass the pre-race inspection. I was delighted with the car and managed to engage an outstanding professional racing mechanic, Jon Redgrave. He reinforced the rollover bar (adding undesirable weight) and off we went testing at Brands Hatch.

  The Brabham was a huge step up from the U2, cornering as if on rails and with astonishing acceleration. Coming out on to the main straight at Brands, I made to overtake another car but moved the steering wheel too quickly and lost control. Fortunately it spun up the straight and came to rest in clouds of tyre smoke without hitting anything. It taught me straightaway that a real racing car was very sensitive and you couldn’t take liberties. The next test was at Thruxton and this time Jean came with me, saw the car run and thought it alarmingly fast. I knew it would take me some time to get used to the speed, and the almost violent way it changed direction and reacted to any bumps on the circuit.

  I also went testing at Snetterton and came up behind a Formula Ford being driven surprisingly, even irritatingly, fast. Back in the paddock the driver got out dressed in scruffy jeans rather than overalls and also wearing plimsoles, something we were always told never to do. Rubber-soled shoes were supposed to be dangerous because they slipped if the pedals were oily. That was my first encounter with James Hunt.

  It is difficult to describe the delight of driving a proper single-seat racing car once you get used to it. If you imagine the best road car you have ever driven, the difference between a real racing car and the best road car is far greater than the difference between the best road car and an old banger. The response, the feeling of being part of the car, the way it seems to have unlimited grip until you reach the limit are extraordinary. Anyone who has driven even the very best road cars would be astonished if they tried a real racing car. It’s another world.

  Of course, I was very aware that the cars were mobile bombs with no protection for the driver, not even seatbelts – just a frame of light, mild steel tubing covered with thin fibreglass as bodywork. Inside the frame were two long petrol tanks, one each side, with the driver lying between them. They were made of very thin aluminium and held in place with tie-wraps. It was obvious that they would fracture in any heavy impact but if you wanted the thrill, you had to accept the risks. A Formula Two car was a smaller version of Formula One. Indeed, Formula Two in 1968, with a 1.6 litre engine, was virtually identical to the 1.5 litre Formula One up to and including 1965. Both had just over 200 bhp. Formula Two lap times at circuits like Monza and Zandvoort were faster than Formula One three years earlier. Even my times would have been fully competitive in the Formula One events up to 1965.

  I fitted seatbelts but only one other Formula Two car had them. When I first asked the racing authorities about seatbelts I was told not to fit them because, they said to my amazement, it was better to be thrown clear in an accident. Then, at the end of the 1960s, Dr Michael Henderson, a safety expert who was a racing driver himself, wrote a seminal book on motor racing safety. In it, he showed that many injuries could be prevented by seatbelts, which would keep the driver away from the steering wheel and sharp parts of the car in an accident. He also pointed out that if the car caught fire (as often happened back then) it was better to be conscious after impact to give you some chance of getting out. Seatbelts were made compulsory in racing cars shortly after Dr Henderson’s book appeared. He went on to have a very distinguished career in road traffic as well as racing safety, and is today a Fellow of the FIA Institute for Motor Sport Safety and chairman of the Australian Institute for Motor Sport Safety.

  The first Formula Two race was at Hockenheim in Germany, where I felt well out of my depth. Several Formula One drivers were there, plus works teams from Ferrari, Lotus and Matra. It was an amazing feeling sitting on the grid with Graham Hill just in front and Jim Clark a bit further up. Both were world champions and both had been in that first race I saw at Silverstone in 1961. I had woken up that morning to hear rain falling. This was not good – 1967 had been a dry summer so I had no experience of racing in the wet. The rain kept falling until just before the start and the track was still wet for the race.

  Immediately after the start, I found myself blinded by thick spray. The circuit headed into a forest with trees either side and nothing but a narrow grass verge between the trees and the track. I tried to keep on the road by looking for the tree tops above the spray, but when I got to fifth gear and about 140 mph I thought: This is madness, like driving in dense fog. I backed off, feeling rather cowardly and expecting everyone behind me to come past. But they didn’t and, when we got back to the stadium where the track twists and turns and the spray was less of a problem, I could see what was going on.

  In front of me was Graham Hill in the works Lotus. He had won the Formula One World Championship in 1962 and, although no one knew at the time, was destined to win a second world title that year. Our cars were similar and both had the same Cosworth FVA engine. I decided if I never did anything else, I had to overtake him. After all, he was a world champion. I managed this a few laps later by going into the blinding spray in his slipstream on the very fast back straight and pulling out into clear air when his car suddenly loomed out of the fog. I crept slowly past. We were both travelling at about 170 mph. I caught his eye as I got alongside. I could imagine what he was thinking. I finished 11th, with Graham just behind in 12th place, in the first heat of this two-part race.

  Back in the paddock after that first heat, someone came up as I got out of my car and asked me in German if Jim Clark was dead. I had been aware something had happened. An ambulance had been parked on the verge by a very fast part of the track, which at that point was a gentle curve. It was flat out in the dry but seemed (to me at least) marginal in the wet. Someone had obviously had an accident. I had no idea it was Jim Clark but I knew the likelihood of the driver surviving after going off the track into a thick forest at 170 mph would be minimal.

  Jim Clark’s death made it impossible to maintain the pretence to Jean that Formula Two was safe. If Jim Clark, a double world champion and probably then the world’s best driver, can get killed, why not you? she asked. Another top British driver, Mike Spence, was killed a few weeks later at Indianapolis and two more drivers at that first Hockenheim race were dead by July – one in Formula Two, the other in Formula One. When I suggested to any of the officials I encountered that the racing was unnecessarily dangerous, the response was always: ‘You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, it’s entirely voluntary. And if you think a corner is dangerous, slow down.’ I resolved that should I one day be in a position to do something about the entirely unnecessary risks, I would.

  After a race at Thruxton in the UK, the next Formula Two Championship event was at Jarama, near Madrid. At the start of the sixth lap I felt a bump when braking for the corner at the end of the start-finish straight and in my mirrors saw one of the Ecurie Intersport McLarens going off the road. At the end of the race, Jon Redgrave said: ‘The driver of that McLaren is looking for you. Says you had him off . . . by the way, he used to play rugby for France.’ It was Guy Ligier. We had what turned out to be an amicable disc
ussion and have been friends ever since – a friendship that became significant later on in Formula One when he had his own team. But even years later, he never failed to mention the Jarama incident whenever we met, particularly if there were strangers present. After I became president of the FIA, it was his favourite joke.

  I also became friendly with those Formula One drivers who also raced Formula Two, people like Jochen Rindt, Graham Hill and Piers Courage. Piers’s car and mine were entered by Frank Williams. At the second Hockenheim race in June my car touched Jo Schlesser’s in a slipstreaming bunch at nearly 170 mph and became airborne. When it landed with a violent bang, I managed to keep it on the circuit and out of the trees, but it was too damaged to continue. My future business partner, Alan Rees, told me later he’d found himself underneath it, looking up at the engine’s sump. Because the car had been in the air for some distance in the braking zone it hadn’t slowed and there was no way to stop or even slow significantly before reaching the corner. A group of photographers and others were standing on the part of the infield I was approaching, watching Rindt and the leaders who had just rounded the corner into the stadium. Fortunately, one of them saw me coming and they scattered just in time.

  A picture of my car apparently standing on its back wheels among a bunch of other cars found its way into one of the magazines and I was relieved that Jean never saw it. After the race, realising I had very nearly gone into the trees at 170 mph, I had a long talk to Piers over dinner. He wondered why I was racing. He said it was different for him: if he weren’t a racing driver he’d have to be an accountant, which he would hate. By contrast, he said, I had an interesting and successful career at the Bar and didn’t need to race. He had a point, but he also well understood that once you have driven a full-on racing car, the temptation to carry on doing it becomes irresistible. Like others, I wanted to do it so badly I was prepared to risk everything.