Ask Nigel: March 14

Dear Nigel,
Of all the various non-championship Formula 1 races held in the UK over the years, which ones were the most prestigious and why? My Dad has Oulton Park Gold Cup programmes from the 1960s and I can't believe some of the names who raced there. I shudder when I see modern BTCC cars go through certain corners, such as Druids, but goodness knows what it must have been like in a 1960s Lotus or Ferrari.
Keith Arlott, Leeds, West Yorkshire

Dear Keith,
I'm a northerner myself, and my local track was Oulton Park when I was growing up; I still think that, in its heyday - before they ruined it with chicanes - it was the best track in the land. In fact, it was at Oulton, on August 7 1954 - the date is imprinted on my mind - that I spent my first day around Grand Prix cars, and resolved somehow to spend my life around them.

My father loved motor racing in those days, and took me to the Gold Cup. Already my hero was Jean Behra, and there he was, in the blue Gordini. I watched him lead the first couple of laps, then despaired as he pulled off, magneto broken...

There was, however, much else to see, notably S. Moss, whose Maserati 25OF had arrived only on race morning, obliging him to start from the back. By lap four he was in front, away into a race of his own. I was eight, and knew it all. "There's Moss," I said to the kid next to me at the fence. "There's Salvadori... Parnell..." A blue Connaught went by. "There's Daddy," the kid said.

In a single day, therefore, I not only fell in love for life, but also learned the beginnings of humility. The sight and sound of Grand Prix cars - particularly that red Maserati - captivated me. And it was only a month or two, my old man said, before I forgave him for being a doctor, rather than a racing driver.

We also used to go to Aintree, but I never developed the same affection for it. Where Oulton swooped through parkland, the Liverpool track was flat and soulless, its spectator areas too far from the action. In comparison with today, I suppose, 'safety' was horribly primitive.

That afternoon at Oulton in '54 Roy Salvadori's Maserati had its throttle stick open, and went into trees, which lined much of the track. It was the first racing accident I had ever seen, and it seemed impossible Salvadori could have survived. But an hour later, in the paddock, there he was, sandwich in one hand, shandy in the other. Could I have his autograph? Yes, I could. It's faded now, but legible still.

The following year was better yet: factory Maseratis for Moss and Luigi Musso, a pair of Lancia D50s, entered by Scuderia Ferrari, for Mike Hawthorn and Eugenio Castellotti, a new BRM for Peter Collins, three Vanwalls, Alfonso de Portago in his own Ferrari... for a non-championship event, the entry was sensational.

The race, too. Moss won again - as he seemed always to do at Oulton - but this time there was pressure. Lap times were four seconds quicker than the year before - are you listening, Max? - and I became aware, for the first time, of the delicious spectacle of a racing car in a drift. Stirling seemed to do a minimum of his steering with the wheel.

Musso, too, although without Moss's certainty of touch. It would have been a Maserati one-two, but the Italian pulled off in front of us, with five laps to go. He behaved as heroes were expected to behave in those days, kicked the car's rear wheel, then walked to the fence, asked if anyone had a cigarette. My mother took a picture as my father held out a packet of Player's to him. Wish I still had it.

After 54 laps Stirling took the flag, and waved to the crowds through Old Hall. At the exit, he floored it, and out stepped the tail of the 250F. A flick of the wheel, and the car was straight again. Through the whole manoeuvre, his left arm remained raised in salute. Worth a guinea a box, memories like that.

Moss, as I say, was unbeatable at Oulton. Wherever else his lousy luck pursued him, it seemed to give him a break when he came here, but if any other driver comes instantly to my mind at the mention of the gorgeous Cheshire circuit, it is Archie Scott-Brown, who twice won the British Empire Trophy there.

In 1957 a Lister-Jaguar was a fearsome thing, and how Archie, with his withered arm, whirled that car around as he did, no one quite understood. He seemed like a magician to me.

Through the '50s and '60s, I never missed a major race at Oulton Park. Some years there were two Fl races there, one in April, the other in September, and the images are unforgettable - Stewart twitching the BRM H16 up Clay Hill in '67, Amon's oversteering Ferrari at Old Hall in '68, the Surtees Honda bellowing painfully down towards Cascades, Clark elegantly outbraking into Lodge.

I remember, too, when Jochen Rindt won the second part of the Gold Cup in August 1970; how he immediately brought the Lotus 72 to a halt at Old Hall, hopped out of the car and straight into a waiting helicopter. It was the first stage of a journey back to Austria, for a guest appearance at a hillclimb the following day. As we watched him walk from the car, removing his helmet, we were watching the end of his last race.

By this time, Oulton Park's great days were essentially done, although Pedro Rodriguez memorably flung his BRM to victory on Good Friday in 1971, and the following year Niki Lauda gave notice of intent with a brilliant wet weather display in the spring Formula 2 meeting.

That September Lauda placed second to March team mate Ronnie Peterson in the Gold Cup, but by now, under the ownership of Motor Circuit Developments, Oulton was changing for the worse, with the emphasis on such as Formula 5000. Bacon sandwiches were giving way to cheap hamburgers.

I have been back only once since 1972. One Wednesday in June of 1975 Chris Amon drove me round in the glorious Ferrari 330P4, steering on the throttle as ever. It was the perfect way to take my leave of a place where all my memories are fine ones, all my gods intact.




Dear Alan,
First, thank you for your kind remarks.

Now, Denis Jenkinson - or 'Jenks', as everyone called him. It's difficult to know where to start! I think of him often, as you might imagine, for he was among my closest friends, and I miss him still, like countless others. Oddly enough, he came into my thoughts only recently, as I ruminated on the death of Dale Earnhardt.

Why? Because I happened to be talking to Earnhardt, in the course of dinner at the Autosport Awards in 1996, when Stirling Moss called for a moment's quiet, then asked us to raise our glasses to the little man, who had died a day or two before. "He was," Stirling said, "a wonderful bloke - and without doubt one of the true eccentrics."

I had learned of Jenks's death with great sadness, but no real surprise, for he had been ill some time. Many at the dinner, though, knew nothing of it prior to Moss's announcement, and there was a rumble of shock across the huge room at The Grosvenor House.

Given that he came from such a different world, I assumed that Earnhardt would never have so much as heard of Jenks, but in fact he was deeply interested in all forms of motor racing, and needed no explanation from me. "He was the guy who went with Moss on the Mille Miglia, right?" Right, I said, taken aback.

Through that evening, it occurred to me how much Jenks would have approved of Dale. No great show of flambuoyance from this greatest of stock car drivers, just a quiet way with one-liners, a hint of smiling eyes.

Jenks would have been taken with Earnhardt, I know, not least because he always loathed the self-important. And beyond that, for all his love of Grand Prix racing, he was never one to denigrate other forms of the sport. A story I've told before is of breakfast in Long Beach one morning, when he saw someone coming into the room, and urgently asked who it was.

"He's a racing driver, isn't he?" It was Cale Yarborough. "Knew it! Didn't know who he was, but I could tell he was a racing driver. Something about his walk, the look in his eyes..."

Like who knows how many others, I grew up on Jenks's writings in Motor Sport, and without any doubt he, much more than anyone else, was responsible for my wishing to write about motor racing. We first met in 1971, the year I started work in this business, and for more than 20 years he, our great mutual friend Alan Henry, and I travelled together. Over countless dinners, bottles of red wine, and glasses of calvados, AH and I learned so much from him.

This is not to say that Jenks was always easy, I might add! He could be as stubborn as anyone I have ever met, and once an idea was fixed in his head, there it stayed, untouched by any contrary argument. He could also be brutally, embarrassingly, direct, in ways that sometimes made you wince. I well remember a leading Grand Prix driver, albeit not a top one, one Saturday afternoon pondering why he was so far down the grid. "Because you're not very good," said Jenks, munching on an apple. I wanted the ground to open up...

So long as he wasn't feeling below par, he was usually wonderful company, able, with his long experience, to produce anecdotes and memories to go with any discussion. These days, as I know only too well myself, 'purists' tend to be denigrated in F1 circles, but Jenks was the ultimate purist, which was probably why we got on so well. He truly loathed anything which he saw as damaging to the dignity of Grand Prix racing - he never called it 'F1' - and always went for drivers who loved the sport for its own sake: Stirling Moss, Jimmy Clark, Mario Andretti, Gilles Villeneuve, Ayrton Senna, and so on.

When we said our farewells to him, it was in a manner of which he would have approved. At his own instruction, the funeral service had 'no religious content whatever,' and in conducting it, Canon Lionel Webber, Chaplain to the British Racing Drivers Club, while acceding to Jenks's wishes, yet achieved a balance of affection and serenity which moved many of us to tears.

"I'm sure he's up there now," the Canon said, "with all his old pals - Ayrton and Gilles and Jimmy - and having an argument with God about whether He exists or not..."

Stirling Moss and Tony Brooks each gave an appreciation of Jenks, in their own ways, wonderfully conveying what he had meant to them and their sport, and at the end the Canon read some of DSJ's writings, concluding with the final paragraphs of his book, 'A Story Of Formula 1', dealing with the 2.5-litre Formula 1 era of 1954-1960.

About to begin was a new era, and Jenks finished the book like this: "If the new formula goes on for seven years as the one about which I have written has done, then I feel sure I shall have seven years of enjoyment, and sadness, in front of me. I hope I shall be able to absorb them to the fullest extent, for as one of the Grand Prix drivers said, when everyone was complaining about the new rules, 'For me, the main thing is to race', and while there are people about with that sentiment then I want to be there to watch them."

Jenks departed to the strains of 'Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye,' by Ella Fitzgerald, whom he adored. It's a favourite of my own, too, and hearing it since has inevitably reminded me of that day. After the service, a large group of us gathered for a drink and a sandwich; everyone had anecdotes to relate, and the mood was light and cheery, just as he would have wished.

What would Jenks have made of racing in 2001? As ever, he would have approved of some things, not others. In truth, I don't think he ever felt quite the same about racing after the death of Senna. "Where do we go now?" he said to me a couple of days after that awful weekend at Imola. "Schumacher does nothing for me..."

Never a Ferrari fan, he would yet have approved of Schumacher the racer, while being contemptuous of some of Michael's on track behaviour, and he would have loved Hakkinen's flowing style and ability to pluck out a pole position time at the very end of a session. I remember his glorious understatement when Mika, in his first race for McLaren, out-qualified team mate Senna at Estoril. "Likely lad..." he murmured.

I think he would have loathed the way 'the cult of personality' has invaded motor racing (as everything else), and also the advent of grooved tyres. "What do they want to slow them down for?" he would always say. "The whole point of motor racing is go faster..." No surprise that his very favourite time was the turbo era, when horsepower went off the clock. His passion always lay with engines, and he loved the idea that from this tiny little 1.5-litre block could come as much - on qualifying boost - as 1500bhp.

As for right now, I fancy that Juan Pablo Montoya will prove very much Jenks's sort of racing driver. Another 'likely lad'...




Dear Andrew,
Swift answer: David Coulthard, Rubens Barrichello, Heinz-Harald Frentzen,
Jean Alesi...




Dear Keith,
I'm pleased to have helped make a 'convert' of you - thank you so much.

Time was, when the great Grand Prix drivers took part, that I adored sports car racing, and I'm sad that its status has been so much reduced over the last 25 years.

As for Le Mans 1955, there is a book on the subject called 'Death Race', and if you can get past the title, it's an extremely good read. Written by Mark Kahn, and published in 1976 by Barrie & Jenkins, it is long out of print now, of course, but well worth seeking out. You might try my friend Paul Zimmermann, in Chicago, whose website is www.motorsportcollector.com.

As for the accident itself, it happened early in the race, at around 6.30 on the Saturday evening. Although Eugenio Castellotti led the early stages in his factory Ferrari, soon Mike Hawthorn took the lead in his D-Type Jaguar, and pulled clear.

Juan Manuel Fangio, meantime, was hauling his Mercedes 300SLR up from the tail of the field, having made a terrible start. Eventually he caught Hawthorn, and for some time the pair ran round together, in a manner suggesting a two-hour Grand Prix, rather than a day-long endurance race.

People who were around at the time, including Denis Jenkinson, have told me of Hawthorn's intense dislike of anything German - this was, remember, only 10 years after the end of the Second World War - and for Mike it was not only Jaguar against Mercedes, but also very much Britain against Germany.

Three years earlier, in 1952, Mercedes finished 1-2 at Le Mans - but only after a Talbot retired with just over an hour to go. It was driven by French journeyman Pierre Levegh, and what was remarkable about it was that he had been at the wheel for 23 hours, having resolutely refused to allow his co-driver to take over. In the last throes of exhaustion, Levegh missed a downshift, and blew the engine.

For the 1955 race, Alfred Neubauer, the legendary Mercedes team manager, decided to it would be good PR to have Levegh in one of the cars at this most famous of all French races. Thus, he was paired with another journeyman, American John Fitch, in the team's third car.

After two and a half hours, the leaders were due in for their first pit stops, and change of driver, and folk have told me - rightly or wrongly - that Hawthorn was hell bent on being in front at the time. As he came down the long pit straight, he passed the much slower Austin-Healey of Englishman Lance Macklin on the left, then braked hard, and abruptly cut across its nose, to stop at his pit.

Macklin, to avoid hitting the Jaguar, had to swerve left - right into the path of Levegh's Mercedes, which had also been lapped. Back then the pit straight at Le Mans was extremely narrow, and poor Levegh had nowhere to go. At close to full speed, the Mercedes hit the Healey, took off, cleared the earth bank on the left, and scythed through the spectator area. Nearly 100 people, including Levegh, were killed.

As may be imagined, the immediate aftermath was indescribable. I have spoken to many who witnessed it, including Phil Hill, and it was clearly harrowing in the extreme. Another great American driver, Phil Walters, was so anguished by what he saw that he never raced again.

It may seem extraordinary now, but in all this carnage the race continued. There were no pace cars in those days, no 'running under yellow', and the organisers opted not to stop the event - rightly, according to Stirling Moss, who suggests that, had they done so, the chaos would have been absolute, the job of the medical folk, tending to the injured and dying, that much more difficult.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, following a decision by the company directors, the two surviving Mercedes - one of which, the Fangio/Moss car, held a comfortable lead - were withdrawn, and in the end victory went, ironically, to the Jaguar of Hawthorn, which he shared with Ivor Bueb.

How did racing survive this catastrophe, you ask? First, you must remember that the times were very different. This was, as I said earlier, only a few years after the war, and attitudes to life and death were not what they are now - there were no seat belts in cars, for example, and everybody smoked.

In racing, too, occasional tragedy was taken for granted. In the two weeks before Le Mans, Alberto Ascari, one of the greatest Grand Prix drivers of all time, had been killed in a testing accident at Monza, and Bill Vukovich, winner of the Indianapolis 500 in 1953 and '54, had been killed in the '55 event. Motor racing was extraordinarily dangerous back then.

What made Le Mans different, of course, was that spectators were involved in the tragedy, and in such numbers. They ran the Dutch Grand Prix the following weekend, but other Grands Prix - the French, the German and the Swiss - were swiftly cancelled, and motor racing in Switzerland has been banned ever since.


If you have a question for Nigel, e-mail it to AskNigel@haynet.com.