How an unloved March carved out a slice of F1 history

Designed and built in just three months, unloved by its own creator and actively disliked by those tasked with driving it, the March 701 nevertheless sits at a fascinating nexus of history. Had those sitting at the table played their cards differently, the car now chiefly notable for being the last privateer entry to win a grand prix could have been a Formula 1 constructors’ title winner… and Jochen Rindt might have seen the day he was crowned champion.

Granted, this is stretching the premise somewhat. The March 701 is by no means the car Robin Herd would have designed had he taken the other route when life presented him with what he described as “a fork in the road” in mid-1969.

The two prongs of that fork, would you believe it, were Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone. At just 30 years old, Herd was considered one of motor racing’s most gifted young technicians, a career trajectory beginning with a double-first in physics and engineering at Oxford and taking in stints working on Concorde, designing McLaren’s innovative composite-chassis M2A and grand prix-winning M7A, and superintending Cosworth’s four-wheel-drive F1 car. When the arrival of wings and fatter tyres rendered 4WD a dead end, Herd was open to offers.

Enter Mosley, a contemporary of Herd at Oxford, by now a barrister – and sometime F2 racer in a car prepared by Frank Williams. Herd and Mosley became reacquainted at Frank’s workshop in Slough when Robin was engaged to convert the Brabham BT26 that Williams had acquired for Piers Courage to accommodate a Cosworth DFV.

One of the many appeals the world of motor racing held for Mosley was that its insular inhabitants either didn’t know or didn’t care that he was the son of the notorious British Union of Fascists leader. A chance meeting blossomed into a proposal for Herd to join the new racing car company Mosley envisioned.

Mosley’s project came together with F2 racer and future Arrows F1 boss Alan Rees joining alongside engineer and amateur F3 competitor Graham Coaker, whose garage became the nascent enterprise’s first production facility.

Maiden victory for the 701 was Stewart's triumph in the 1970 Race of Champions at Brands Hatch

Photo by: Getty Images

Since time and money were tight, Herd’s first design would be an F3 car cobbled together with Lotus and Brabham parts – but Mosley’s ambition was to hit F1 as soon as possible. To this end, he travelled to Switzerland to pitch the project to Rindt in person, fully aware that having an exciting talent signed up would make attracting the necessary finance an easier task.

Rindt entertained the proposal but, balancing the knowns of Lotus against the unknowns of a new company still operating from a residential address, declared he had no intention of racing a car built in “Graham’s shack”, his accent and dismissive tone rendering the phrase as “grem’s sheck”.

Undeterred, the founders ploughed on and briefly named their project ‘Gremshek Engineering’ before alighting on March – a collection of their initials – when they came to file the paperwork at Companies House.

Each of March’s founders agreed to put in £2500 – Mosley borrowed from his mother, while Herd and Rees had bet on Stewart to win the world championship

Ecclestone, Rindt’s manager, also had a pitch for Herd to consider. As disappointments piled up in F1 – slow Coopers, unreliable Brabhams, fast but fragile Lotuses – the Austrian was often at his happiest in F2 with Roy Winkelmann’s eponymous operation.

His team-mate (later team manager) Rees was a schoolfriend of Herd’s. Among the plates Ecclestone was spinning in 1969, besides the question of whether Rindt should stay at Lotus or return to Brabham for the following F1 season, was a putative Winkelmann-run F1 campaign – which would require a car.

“When my attempt to recruit Jochen reached Bernie’s ears,” wrote Mosley in his autobiography, “he realised that Robin was planning to leave Cosworth to be the designer and partner in a new F1 team. He immediately tried to persuade Robin to go in with him and Jochen. This would be a much better way, he said, to start a new team.

“Bernie had some good arguments: he had money, we didn’t; and in Jochen he had the driver everyone thought was the quickest around, with the possible exception of Jackie Stewart. Fortunately for the March project, Robin’s response was that he had agreed a deal and was not prepared to go back on it…”

Winkelmann’s team stayed where it was and Rindt remained with Lotus for the 1970 F1 season, the consequences of which are well documented.

Each of March’s founders agreed to put in £2500 – Mosley borrowed from his mother, while Herd and Rees had bet on Stewart to win the world championship. Within weeks of moving into new premises in Bicester, the F3 car was ready for the up-and-coming Ronnie Peterson to introduce it to the world – in the heady heights of the Lincolnshire International Trophy at Cadwell Park in late September.

Amon won non-championship International Trophy from pole position

Photo by: Getty Images

It was a close-run result… between Brabham-mounted Tim Schenken and Howden Ganley. Peterson was third, 16 seconds in arrears, ahead of James Hunt. Given Peterson’s spectacular form in a humdrum Tecno earlier in the season, this was considered a decent result rather than a great one.

The following weekend Peterson had an altercation with a straw bale at Montlhery and rolled the car, whereupon it caught fire and, with only one marshal on hand to douse the flames, Peterson would have met his maker without the intervention of mechanic Ray Wardell.

Still, Mosley went all-in on the F1 project – in a flurry of misdirection and sleight-of-hand of which Ecclestone, soon to become a lifelong associate and chum, would be proud.

A month later Mosley announced a multi-car F1 programme with Chris Amon and Jo Siffert driving works cars, a singular coup since Amon had been Ferrari’s lead driver in F1 before quitting the team, and Siffert was all set to take his place until Porsche, not wanting to lose him to Ferrari in sportscars, offered £30,000 to any team that would take him instead.

Though perhaps not considered a top-line F1 driver by some, Siffert had won a grand prix in a Rob Walker-run Lotus 49 and was arguably Ferrari’s best option until Jacky Ickx decided to return. The following edition of Autosport, 13 November 1969, also reported that the Tyrrell team would purchase three Marches: a spare alongside one for reigning world champion Stewart and another for a then-undecided team-mate. There was talk, too – put about by Mosley – of further orders from Ford of Germany to run Rolf Stommelen, and another car for Peterson.

“The F1 set-up is completely separate from the manufacturing side, which is already well under way with F2, F3 and FB production, and several orders have been taken,” concluded the entry in Pit & Paddock. Here the source was being economical with the actualite, for Coaker would soon begin to chafe at the F1 project sapping resource and energy from customer chassis production, and in 1971 was the first of the founders to leave.

Others in the motor racing firmament failed to share Mosley’s – and Autosport’s – optimism. Paddock wits suggested the company acronym stood for Much Advertised Racing Car Hoax. Tyrrell, forced to the customer-car altar by its schism with Matra, quietly drew up plans for a car of its own.

March Engineering founders Herd, Rees, Coaker and Mosley with the new 701

Photo by: David Phipps / Getty Images

Speculation turned to whether March would have any cars ready for the 6 February launch date that Mosley had put about. But Herd was working 24/7 at March’s newly rented Bicester workshops and, though the final product bore ample evidence of its rushed gestation, not just one but two chassis were ready for shakedown at Silverstone as advertised – but this wasn’t the only significant development for the new F1 contender.

Amon duly appeared on the cover of Autosport’s 12 February 1970 issue testing the new March 701 with large STP stickers on the nose and rear wing. This was no hoax. As Quentin Spurring reported within, not only was STP Corporation sponsoring the works team, but it was buying and entering its own car for Mario Andretti, 1969 Indianapolis 500 winner in an STP-sponsored Hawk. STP president Andy Granatelli himself (“just about the most controversial figure in motor racing anywhere”) was on hand to explain his thinking.

In period, the arrival of a seemingly major sponsor – and a rather brash, American one with it – was little short of a sensation, for it brought worrisome connotations of US commercial arrangements. This was just two calendar years on from purists having to reach for the smelling salts when South African equipe Team Gunston had the audacity to paint its private entries for its home grand prix in the colours of its tobacco sponsor, followed a few weeks later by Team Lotus doing likewise with Gold Leaf. For many fans, deviation from national racing colours remained tantamount to blasphemy.

Herd would later describe the 701 as ‘nothing like the car I wanted to build’ since the compressed design period required corners to be cut

“The thought of a gridful of Formula 1 cars at Silverstone for the British GP with names like Kokonut Kandy Special and Give Him Fojo New Doggie Food-Ford might be repugnant,” wrote Spurring with a palpable shudder, “but it could happen.” We really must give ‘Q’ a ring and see what he made of the operation that briefly sailed under the flag of Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula 1 Team.

Both Amon and Siffert drove the works car on the day, and there was confirmation that Peterson would indeed get his F1 opportunity in a 701 “entered privately from Sweden” (the reality behind Mosley’s bluster here would prove rather different).

Stewart and newly announced team-mate Johnny Servoz-Gavin evaluated the other car, already painted in Tyrrell’s Elf-mandated blue colours. JYS bridled against the lack of elbow room in the cockpit; this would come to rank among the lesser negatives he expressed about the 701.

Nevertheless, the reality for Tyrrell was to take the March or have no car at all, at least for the beginning of the season. Although its in-house project remained a closely guarded secret, and still in the early stages of coming together in Derek Gardner’s spare bedroom and garage in Leamington Spa, it was widely known that Brabham, McLaren and BRM had turned down approaches to provide a car. After all, why supply a rival? If Herd had taken the fork in the road that led to Ecclestone, Tyrrell would have had to sit out the beginning of the 1970 season or try to whistle the De Tomaso out from under Frank Williams.

Autosport technical editor John Bolster and photographer Peter Burn were also granted the kind of access unthinkable in the current era: not just a trip to the factory and an opportunity to interview the principals, but also to see and capture part-built monocoques up close. Bolster was particularly enthusiastic about the 701’s signature feature, a “low-aspect aerofoil for turbulent conditions, mounted along each side of the body.

“These two deep-bellied projections, made of glassfibre reinforced with carbon fibres, have ample space for any extra tankage required. As the car itself carries 40 gallons of fuel, this will be sufficient for some races, but an extra 10 gallons will be hidden in the aerofoils for the tougher events. Whether the extra tankage is required or not, it is likely to be advantageous to carry the aerofoils on any circuit.”

Stewart took this car, 701 chassis 4, to second place at Zandvoort

Photo by: James Mann

Herd later admitted that his claim for these devices mitigating turbulence was pure nonsense. In fact, the aerofoils – designed by Peter Wright of Specialised Mouldings – were there for the purpose of generating negative pressure underneath the car’s floor. Given the lack of ‘seal’ to the underfloor and their position in the messy wake of the front wheels, it’s unlikely they had any effect at all, but Wright would get there later in the decade at Lotus.

Herd would later describe the 701 as “nothing like the car I wanted to build” since the compressed design period required corners to be cut. Had he taken the other fork in the road – to Ecclestone – in the summer of 1969, he reckoned the finished car would have been more like the 711 chassis he designed for March in 1971. Indubitably the 701 was a belt-and-braces project rather flattered by Bolster’s generous write-up in Autosport.

But, equally, it arrived at a time when its shortcomings were mitigated by a tyre-development war and other teams – notably Ferrari and Lotus – introducing new technical concepts that took time to show their potential. It also, arguably, did grand prix racing a favour in an era of patchy entries: just 13 F1 cars had started the previous season’s German GP at the Nurburgring.

Just as corners had to be cut during the development phase, though, lack of funds meant economies had to be made throughout the season. Straight after the 701 launch, the cars were freighted to South Africa for tyre testing ahead of the first round of the season at Kyalami. While Stewart circulated on Dunlops, Firestone was underwriting the cost of March’s travel.

“At one point Robin, who was anxiously waiting for some parts,” recalled Mosley, “sent me a telex saying their failure to arrive was ‘screwing the whole issue’. I sent him one back saying if we didn’t get the miles done for Firestone, there wouldn’t be an issue left to screw.”

While Stewart would later rank the 701 among the worst F1 cars he raced, he duly qualified on pole for the season opener with Amon alongside, and led for a time after Rindt hit Amon and Jack Brabham at the first corner. Thereafter he fell behind Brabham, Denny Hulme and Bruce McLaren as his 701’s pendulous handling became increasingly wayward, salvaging a podium when McLaren’s engine let go.

In the somewhat less balmy environs of Brands Hatch at the end of March, Stewart won the Race of Champions by over half a minute from Rindt, though of course Jochen was labouring with an elderly Lotus 49 ahead of the 72’s much-anticipated debut. March’s first race win had come much earlier than many sceptics had anticipated – perhaps even Stewart – since Brabham led until suffering an ignition problem three laps from the flag.

Amon secured another non-championship victory at the BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone, setting pole and winning heat one while Stewart won the second.

The 701 was hitting its peak. A week before Silverstone, at the unloved Jarama circuit near Madrid, Brabham set pole with Stewart third and Amon sixth. Servoz-Gavin and Andretti were lucky to join the show after a spat between the teams and the organisers over how many cars could start; Siffert was one of four drivers escorted off the grid along with their cars by baton-wielding police.

Jarama was where Stewart claimed the 701's sole grand prix victory

Photo by: Rainer W Schlegelmilch / Getty Images

On the opening lap there was an unfortunate coming-together between the previous year’s Le Mans winners when Jackie Oliver’s BRM broke a driveshaft and arrived at the apex of an infield left-hander sideways, collecting the Ferrari 312B of Ickx and precipitating a fireball. This being 1970, the race continued regardless and Stewart, who had already seized the lead, ran on to win by a lap from McLaren and Andretti. Just five cars finished.

March’s first grand prix win as a constructor also stands as the last for a private entry, since Tyrrell had yet to become a constructor. When it did, it happily parked its Marches before selling them on as a new era began.

Aside from being around 15kg too heavy, the 701’s key weakness was its dumbbell-style weight distribution, a consequence of Herd having to use an off-the-shelf radiator at the front. Having already designed the fuel tank slightly too small for some circuits – hence the need for auxiliaries in the sidepods – Herd tried to balance the car out by locating the oil in a tank slightly aft of the rear axle. The result was a queasy and discombobulating lurch from understeer to oversteer, particularly in slower corners. It was disconcertingly bouncy over bumps, too.

Aside from being around 15kg too heavy, the 701’s key weakness was its dumbbell-style weight distribution

Inferior to Brabham’s BT33 straight out of the box, the 701 had little runway for development given its simplicity and, once the Ferrari 312B and Lotus 72 came on song, opportunities to shine were few – not helped by budget-enforced ‘stretching’ of component life. Peterson, signed up to a three-year works deal only to be displaced by Siffert when Porsche’s wallet hove into view, joined the grid from Monaco onwards in a satellite entry run by Colin Crabbe’s Antique Automobiles organisation.

The DFV in his 701 was the same unit that had been in the back of the McLaren M7B written off by Vic Elford at the Nurburgring the previous year. There was no budget for a rebuild, so Peterson had to nurse it all year.

This is the prism through which we must view the late Herd’s spurious claim that Amon was only beaten to second place at Spa by Pedro Rodriguez because the winning BRM had an illegal 3.3-litre engine. Dispirited by lack of development, operational budget and salary (long into retirement, he would regale interviewers with details of how Mosley only paid him the first £25,000 instalment of a promised £100,000), Amon quit at the end of the season.

After leading the constructors’ championship early on, March slid to third, a position it would never better in subsequent years despite achieving much success in other categories. Perhaps more significantly for the F1 world, during that time Mosley and Ecclestone ceased to be presenters of alternate opportunities, very much working hand-in-glove…

Race record

Starts 64
Wins 1
Pole positions 3
Fastest laps 1
Podiums 8
Championship points 48

Specification

Chassis Aluminium monocoque
Suspension Double wishbones with outboard coil-over dampers
Engine Ford Cosworth DFV V8
Engine capacity 2993cc
Power 400bhp @ 9000rpm
Gearbox Hewland DG300 five-speed manual
Brakes Steel discs
Tyres Firestone, Dunlop, Goodyear
Weight 565kg
Notable drivers Jackie Stewart, Chris Amon, Mario Andretti, Ronnie Peterson, Francois Cevert

Little scope for development, plus budget-enforced stretching of component life, limited the 701's potential

Photo by: James Mann