The tragedy of F1's penniless millionaire

"When I talk about Piers," says Frank Williams, "I have to be careful not to make it sound like a eulogy. He viewed almost everything with an amused eye - he was the life and soul of dinner parties, because he could sit with complete strangers, and talk to them about anything. In those days I took to travelling with books of poetry, to be ready for him - but even so, he could always out quote me, which maddened me!

"He had become an extremely good driver, getting better all the time, but as well as that was a totally loveable character: funny, charming, loyal. People like Piers don't exist any more because life, as they say, has moved on.

"In today's racing world, there's no one like him - at all."

I never knew Piers Courage, and the more I have come to know of him - from conversations with such as Frank - the more I regret it.

The eldest son of the chairman of the Courage Breweries, he indeed came from a privileged background, knowing nothing beyond great wealth until deciding to pursue a career in motor racing, this after reading a book, The Vanishing Litres.

"Piers had a lovely dry sense of humour," says Williams, "and delighted in telling stories against himself. I'd come from a poor background, and didn't have anything like his self-confidence. 
I was mesmerised by him.

"He was desperate to succeed as a driver, and in fact his background rather worked against him. People assumed he couldn't be tough enough, and also that he had access to family money, which wasn't the case, because his parents didn't want him to race. He was like the rest of us - broke."

Courage began racing in 1963 with a Lotus 7, in which he proved quick, but somewhat erratic: "At Aintree the motor racing circuit runs parallel, in places, with the horse racing circuit: quite inadvertently, I sampled them both..."

The following year he moved up to Formula 3, joining the celebrated 'continental circus'.

Williams remembers it as a hand-to-mouth existence: "It was a matter of setting off to East Germany or Sicily or wherever, towing the car behind his old Ford Zephyr. Piers crashed fairly regularly in 1964, and you'd probably doubt me if I told you we used to straighten out the chassis by pushing it against a wall with another car! But that's what we did.

"Even when he was penniless, though, Piers was always very much the English gent.

"We'd share the driving and he'd sleep on the back seat - but always in pyjamas! We'd stop on an autobahn at first light, and Piers would head off to the gents with his toothbrush, still in his pyjamas - the locals used to think that very strange."

It would be easy to get the impression of a dilettante, but Williams insists that Courage was always resolutely dedicated to his career.

Over the winter of 1967/68 he put together a team for the Tasman Series, running an F2 McLaren. If he were usually hard pressed to stay with Jim Clark's Lotus and Chris Amon's Ferrari, in torrential rain he beat everyone at Longford, an open road circuit lethal even in perfect conditions.

"Piers," Amon remembered, "was always abnormally brave."

After graduating to Formula 1, Courage drove BRMs for the Parnell team in 1968, then joined Frank's fledgling team.

"It was a lovely year, that," says Williams. "Brabham chassis, Cosworth engines, Dunlop tyres. Given the relative paucity of opposition that season, you usually got points if you finished. We were second at Monaco and Watkins Glen, and so on. In 1969 it was essentially just Piers and me, with three mechanics, and that year he really found himself as a racing driver."

For 1970 Williams reached agreement with de Tomaso to run a new Dallara-designed car: "These days drivers are very... commercially minded, but Piers didn't view racing quite like that. He had a firm offer from Ferrari for 1970, but he'd already agreed to stay with me, and never thought of going back on his word. For the drivers of today it would have been no contest."

Initially the de Tomaso was well off the pace, but Dallara's second car was a great improvement. In the BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone Courage finished third, behind Amon and Jackie Stewart, and by midseason was becoming competitive.

"Racing was a lot of fun in those days," Williams remembers, "Everything was coming along well. Ford had bought out de Tomaso, so we had hopes of more financial backing and technical support - and here was this society golden boy driving for the team. Great-looking bloke, devastatingly charming, beautiful wife, all that stuff. Sally was just like Piers - nutty as a fruitcake!

"I have a particular memory of one afternoon with them, at Monaco in 1970. We were sitting in a little old cafe, with everyone stopping by to say hello, and I couldn't help thinking that their life was almost too good to be true, that it just couldn't go on..."

The following month, shortly after the death of Bruce McLaren at Goodwood, Courage's de Tomaso went off the road during the Dutch Grand Prix and was engulfed in fire.

I was spectating at Zandvoort that day, and remember the relief we felt when the commentator declared that all was well, for it certainly hadn't looked that way, in the distance a huge waft of black smoke billowing into the gloomy sky.

Half an hour later came an announcement that there had been 'a mistake': "We have to tell you that Piers Courage died in his car."

"In every respect," says Williams, "life got very tough the next day.

"I can't say I considered getting out of the business, but after Piers died it was matter of going racing for different reasons. I was devastated. Every one of his contemporaries came to his funeral, which says a lot. All these years on I think of him, for example whenever I hear Beethoven's Sixth Symphony - the Pastoral - his favourite piece of music, I remember him very fondly.

"In the sixties and seventies," Frank murmurs, "we buried a lot of drivers, didn't we?"