When F1 ‘holiday’ races kept drivers busy through the winter

When Max Verstappen files off to the Bahrain Grand Prix – or any F1 race, for that matter – he won’t give a second thought to how his car will get there. It will be assumed that the Red Bull RB19 will arrive as immaculate as it left Milton Keynes.

Compare this with the travel arrangements laid out for Denny Hulme in the winter of 1966/67. The world champion-elect had to load his Brabham onto a trailer and tow the BT11/22 behind a Ford Zodiac saloon car from Surrey to Liverpool in time for the race car to be loaded onto a ship bound for New Zealand.

The voyage was estimated to take five weeks, during which time Hulme and his boss, Jack Brabham, would take part in the South African Grand Prix on 2 January 1967 before hurrying to Auckland for a non-championship race seven days later. When they finally reached the Pukekohe circuit, Hulme was appalled to see the state of his car.

“We thought the car would have been off the boat about a week before it actually did,” wrote Hulme in his column in Motor Racing. “When it did come off the boat, it was in the worst condition you ever did see. It was absolutely incredible; you would have thought it had been towed there all the way behind the boat, instead of coming in the hold. Apparently, some of this condition stemmed from the time it spent on Liverpool docks waiting to be slung aboard. It took a couple of days to get the car into shape.”

Hulme thought he was lucky when Brabham’s car didn’t arrive at all due to a strike at Qantas Airways. But then Jack commandeered Hulme’s fettled machine while Denny was offered a drive in a 1963/64 ex-works F1 Brabham that had been sold by Jack to a Kiwi privateer the previous year. All of which helps explain why Brabham and his team should go to all this trouble for a few short races on the other side of the world.

Known as the Tasman Series, these races in New Zealand and Australia may not have counted for the F1 world championship, but its value was priceless as a pre-season test for various developments, plus a ready market for soon-to-be-redundant F1 cars after they had been raced successfully and impressed potential buyers. And last, but not least, here was an opportunity to enjoy a few weeks in the South Pacific summer.

Moss won the New Zealand Grand Prix aboard a Lotus 21 in 1962 as the trend of heading to Australasia over the European winter gathered pace

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The strength of such attractions was evident in 1966/67 by the Tasman Series attracting the aforementioned works entries from Brabham (the reigning constructors’ world champion), a Lotus for Jim Clark, plus BRMs for Jackie Stewart and Richard Attwood. A third BRM to be shared by Piers Courage and Chris Irwin amounted to the 1960s equivalent of the current FP1 opportunity for rookies. Clark would come out on top after winning five of the eight races (including two non-championship rounds) spread evenly through New Zealand and Australia.

Local motor sport fans were becoming accustomed to embracing the presence of F1 royalty. It hadn’t always been like that before the creation of the Tasman Series despite the best efforts to draw big names to the southern hemisphere. In 1953, for example, public roads in an Australian city had been closed for a motor race for the first time as a 3.1-mile circuit was laid out in Melbourne’s Albert Park (very different to the track used today). The 64-lap race was won by Australia’s Doug Whiteford in the 4.5-litre Talbot-Lago used by Louis Chiron to win the 1949 French GP at Reims.

Different days, maybe, but some things never change. Whiteford was the subject of a post-race protest. “Whiteford,” reported Autosport, “was reputed to have had more than three mechanics working on his car during his short pitstop. This could have been so, in that the pit area was neither properly barricaded nor policed and it is understood that in the excitement a spectator did assist. Yet had Whiteford taken as much as 10 minutes to change the wheel, it would not have affected the result.”

Lewis-Evans was to prove a better driver than a salesman when he excitedly phoned Ecclestone with the news that the unwieldy and unreliable cars had proved difficult to shift – but he had successfully negotiated their sale in exchange for a stamp collection

Such a massive winning margin tells you about the need to inject foreign participation. British private entrants Reg Parnell and Peter Whitehead were tempted to enter the 1957 New Zealand Grand Prix, the long journey being made worthwhile by a one-two finish for the Englishmen and the subsequent sale of their ex-works Ferrari Super Squalo F1 cars.

News of this profitable venture appealed to a certain Bernard Charles Ecclestone. In late 1957, the Suffolk-born motor trader bought two Connaught F1 cars at the failed team’s closing down auction and dispatched them to New Zealand; Ecclestone instructed his drivers, Stuart Lewis-Evans and Roy Salvadori, to sell the Connaughts after they had been raced.

Lewis-Evans was to prove a better driver than a salesman when he excitedly phoned Ecclestone with the news that the unwieldy and unreliable cars had proved difficult to shift – but he had successfully negotiated their sale in exchange for a stamp collection. Bernie’s response was reportedly short and sharp. The cars were immediately shipped back to Britain.

When Brabham, Stirling Moss and John Surtees were among the F1 names to regularly win the New Zealand and Australian Grands Prix, it was decided to formulate the Tasman Series, beginning in January 1964. A maximum engine capacity of 2.5 litres was stipulated to prevent Europeans arriving with faster, more powerful machinery. But that didn’t deter Bruce McLaren from suggesting that his employer, Cooper, adapt its successful F1 car specifically for the newly created series.

Promising American Mayer, whose elder brother Teddy would go on to run McLaren, was killed aboard a Cooper at Longford

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When John Cooper rejected the idea, the Kiwi decided to do it on his own – thus forming the nucleus of the McLaren team we know today. Costs were amortised by building a second so-called Tasman Cooper for Timmy Mayer, a promising young American. McLaren won his home grand prix and the championship, but this came at a terrible price when Mayer was killed during practice for the final race at Longford in Tasmania.

The 4.3-mile Longford road circuit, with its wooden bridges, viaducts, railway level crossing and 175-mph straight, was the outlier in a series that had the bumpy and tight 1.1-mile Levin track in New Zealand at the opposite end of the scale, both geographically and challenging. In between, visits to a fast airfield circuit at Wigram and a temporary track utilising facilities at a horse racing course at Melbourne’s Sandown would contribute to racing venues that frequently appeared to interrupt a full-on social life.

Writing in his Autosport column in February 1968, McLaren recalled: “We spent a few days at Lake Taupo swimming, shooting, skiing and fishing. We had a few barbecues too, but none to beat the spread put on by [Ferrari driver] Chris Amon’s mother and father at their beach house. The stack of steaks and sausages waiting was just fantastic – it could have fed an army. I counted 50 people there and, after the ‘Kiwis versus Poms’ cricket match on the lawn in the afternoon, they made a fair-sized hole in the food.”

The 1968 Tasman Series ensured Piers Courage would be able to put food on his table for the foreseeable future. Still struggling to become fully established on the F1 scene, the Englishman made a last throw of the dice by borrowing the £4,300 necessary to purchase a well-used McLaren M4A F2 car and raising a similar amount to pay for the trip to the Antipodes.

Shaking off a reputation for crashing more often than not, Courage was the only driver to finish all eight races. Better than that, he was the winner in wet and scary conditions at Longford; a superb drive that secured an F1 contract with BRM and led to GP podium finishes with Frank Williams. Courage’s Tasman gamble was made complete when he sold the M4A at a profit and enjoyed the additional bonus of saving the return shipping cost.

Expenses would come into play the following year when Amon wanted to continue racing in front of his home crowd. Enzo Ferrari agreed to let Chris and Derek Bell have two of the beautiful little F2 cars with 2.4-litre V6 engines; perfect for Tasman territory. There was just one proviso; Amon would have to finance the entire trip. Bell and his mechanic were dispatched from England to pick up the Ferraris in Maranello. He takes up the story in his autobiography.

“There was a major drama at the Italian border,” wrote Bell. “Two confused Englishmen with a Transit van and a trailer carrying two single-seater Ferraris, en route to England to go to Australia and New Zealand. The Italian customs officials looked pretty doubtful, so they made us wait. There was a football game on and these damned officials kept rushing off to hear how their team was doing.

The Tasman Series wasn't a priority for Ferrari, but it stills sent two cars raced by Amon and Bell (pictured)

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“From Ferrari’s point of view, this was a very low-key operation, and we didn’t have the right paperwork. We had to wait all day before they decided to let us through. After that, the whole Tasman trip was really fantastic [Amon winning the championship, with Bell finishing fourth behind Jochen Rindt’s Lotus and the Williams Brabham of Courage].”

Budgets would come increasingly into play as the Formula 1 calendar expanded and began to intrude at either end of the Tasman ‘holiday’ period. Rising costs also prompted race organisers to incorporate the cheaper alternative of F5000 cars, by which time the F1 team owners had begun to conclude it was no longer worth the special effort, particularly when reducing 3-litre F1 engines to the 2.5-litre capacity required for the Tasman.

The racing holiday down under may have finally ended in 1975 but memories would endure of close racing, exceptional socialising and, quite often, a major effort needed just to reach this very special motor sport environment 10,000 miles from home.

The Tasman Series was a popular avenue for drivers to keep match fit over winter, for teams to develop new parts, and demonstrate their old cars in a captive market

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