F1, the First Time

I didn’t put my fingers in my ears back then and I’ve never done it since when standing anywhere near a racing car that is running. I simply can’t do it, never mind won’t. Back then was 1978 and I was at the British Grand Prix held at the Brands Hatch racing circuit in Kent, England with my Dad. It was my first encounter with the world of Formula One and at that time I would’ve been around 13 and already developing quite a healthy interest in everything with four wheels. Memories of that day are special and many but the strongest is of peeking through the tiny holes dug into the wooden boards of the sweltering footbridge down the straight as the beautiful black and gold Lotus cars of Andretti and Peterson screamed under us through Pilgrim’s Drop into turn five, Hawthorn bend. Dad said we could dig the holes out a bit bigger, so it was OK.

Two years before now the heat wave of 1976 had been slowly roasting the British public and this weekend wasn’t much different on a stifling overcast Sunday in July. I can remember the survival techniques that we kids developed at home, taking cold water from the open hose pipe, seeing how much you could drink by putting your mouth right over the end and swallowing as fast as you could, or snatching it from each other to use for water fights. Surprised we never drowned! My Mum had one of those sets of plastic moulds that you could use to make your own cordial flavoured ice-lollies. A tree of plastic sticks with rocket shaped moulds that you filled with your favourite sugar-loaded drink and then popped in the freezer. Scorched grass, concrete-hard earth, popping tarmac bubbles on the way to school, all signs of a hot summer.

I didn’t know any of the names of the bends and corners at the track back then, relying solely on Dad’s knowledge of the track. He’d been a visitor a few times more than I had, often times with my Uncle on one of his shore visits from raising hell around the world in the Merchant Navy. I relish the tale of Uncle’s test drive in a Mark 1 Lotus Cortina, the hot-rod of the day, thrashing the car to within an inch of it’s twin-cam life and turning the salesman ashen faced and more than a little hot under the collar. He didn’t buy it either preferring the low slung chick magnet he had in the form of a Triumph Spitfire. If only huh?

Anyway, back at Brands and with Dad knowing all the best places to see the cars we trudged round the place forever. It set me in good stead many years later when a mate and I would drive up on Sundays to watch the club races or the rallycross or anything else that involved a good healthy waste of petrol and a slog through the mud.

Dad had brought his treasured 35mm Kodak camera for the Grand Prix and my efforts at early photography were well rewarded, although I could kick myself these days for cutting off poor Jody Scheckter’s head in the paddock and completely missing our own fighting hero James Hunt. At one point he was probably stood right in front of me, Dad knew some people in the pits, Dad knew everyone come to think of it. That’s right we were in the paddock standing next to the roped off pit garages that would now be the sole domain of freeby invite-only sports personalities, fly-by-night rappers and unknown filthy rich people. But not this day, Dad had managed to get tickets for us. My photos are good though and I still have the programme from the day. Another special is the memory of standing next to a pale blue Ford GT40 with the number plate “GT40” and peering through the plexiglass side windows with hand cupped to shade the sunlight away. It was parked in the dusty, dirty gravel paddock next to the trailers and trucks and it was a proper, 60’s GT40, not a striped up Ford GT or a kit and although it was special back then, it was no more guarded than the Ford Granada tow car parked next to it. Who owns it now? Would it be sitting in a paddock car park for young teenagers to marvel at these days?

The memory of that wooden bridge has been re-visited for me on a few occasions, most notably at Le Mans when we’ve peeked through the steel plates of the famous Dunlop Bridge and Spa Francorchamps in Belgium has a bridge over the track too, with holes. It’s funny how time plays tricks on the memory; I wish I could remember more from that day. We probably drove there in my Dad’s MKII Ford Cortina, a 1600GT, red of course, he loved his Cortinas and had one of every Mark from the MKI (which started life badge as a Consul) through to the signal red MKIV that I passed my driving test in. All of them were red. All were at least GT’s and to me at least, all were ultra cool. Isn’t everybody’s Dad’s car cool?

Later in life he would confess that he always wanted an “E”, which was the Executive model, with metallic paint, varnished wood and a bit more chrome. But I’m glad he stayed a GT man; the MKII had black matte Lotus look-alike stripes that he painted on, but the MKIII had the coolest thing of all with a black matte bonnet, bolt-on go faster bits and at one stage in its life side-pipes. These monstrous side exiting exhaust pipe contraptions were from the US hot rod world made famous by the AC Cobra. Now, Dad’s old Cortina was never gonna be in the same league as a Cobra but he was determined to have a go. Ask my Mum about the multi-storey car park debacle, scraping its way up and down every ramp and the noise it made was horrendous. Side pipes; neither one of Dad’s coolest, nor long-lasting customising tricks. But the matte black bonnet was the best.

It wouldn’t have been far from home for the track was local to us and we got to drive up ‘Death Hill’, which was the A20 trunk road past the circuit named then after the loony motorcyclists who would race up and down it from Johnson’s Café while the records played on the jukebox. It was renamed Gorse Hill to appease the politically correct but little did they realise it killed off a big part of Kent’s tourist industry, so you won’t find it now but it was all mythical to me then. Back then we were also in the time of the famous John Player Special brand. Colin Chapman had done another deal with another cigarette giant (red and white liveried cars from the Gold Leaf days were his first) and painted his cars in those unmistakable black and gold colours, even pin-striping them to turn out very ‘special” racing cars indeed. Never mind that technically they were streets in front of everything else, for we were now also into ‘ground-effect’ cars, so named after Chapman’s love of flying and everything aerodynamic and winged, these black and gold missiles looked like world champions just sitting on the grid. Skirts were in for racing cars and the buzz-word was aerodynamics.

Not long after this particular race a very clever engineer designer by the name of Gordon Murray devised an almost worthy opponent of the Lotus 79. He worked for a team called Brabham, managed by a little guy called Ecclestone (who went to school with my Dad (told you he knew some people)), it was the Brabham BT46 and it was dubbed the fan car. Not because everyone loved it but because it had a stonking great air fan that ran at the back of the car and literally sucked its rear end to the track. Murray had spied the Lotus cars at other races and could only see the skirts as visible evidence that something was different about them; this led him to believe that Chapman had some sort of device on the car that pulled it to the track. So advanced was Chapman’s genius at that time that the equally brilliant Murray just couldn’t work out the full details of ground effect. Who would ever have thought to make the underside of a racing car shaped like a plane wing in reverse, knowing that as it travelled forward the air pressure in the space would drop and the lift would actually be transformed into more of a suck, dragging the Lotus closer to the ground? The side skirts were needed to maintain this pocket of low pressure under the car. Colin Chapman; not just a flamboyant character in gold Dunhill sunglasses and trend-setting race wear but a true engineering genius.

I know we both couldn’t wait to see Andretti and Peterson’s Lotus’s (should that be Lotii?). With their paint colours, few sponsor stickers and little Union flag designs on the nose they just looked fantastic. And they were also the days when you bragged about being a constructor by putting your crowns across the rear wing. I think these cars had five; the patriotic Brits loved Chapman and his cars.

As the day wore on and the early saloon car races went by we would have had some lunch, most likely some sarnies that Mum made up for us and we definitely had Coca-Cola from cans with the old style ring pulls. You pulled up the ring and ripped off the whole triangular tab from the top of the can. Then, you placed the end of the tab that was now bent into a curve, in one of the little slots on the ring. Drawing back the ring against the spring of the tab you could fire it off at the nearest target. Probably into the dust along with the other 100,000 people reportedly there that day.

The big race was no disappointment, but the thousands and thousands of people did mean it was almost an overwhelming sensation of trudging round finding places to just see the track, let alone prime spots to view the cars. The red and white McLarens were popular because our own James Hunt was driving one that in ’77 had a number one on the nose. Now however his luck was running out and he retired on lap 7 after one of his infamous shunts. Although I can’t remember these things that actually happened on the day I now know that Carlos Reutemann won from my interest in F1 these days. I’m also pretty sure that as soon as the Lotus cars were out with engine and electric gremlins Dad and I stayed for as long as we could before we beat a hasty retreat for the hills to avoid the traffic chaos at the day’s end.

I only have my photo’s and the program from the day as real souvenirs but the memories in my head remain the best, the sound of the 12 cylinders in the Alfa and the Double Four Valve hidden under that sleek black bodywork ring around in my head from back then, just as the V10 Renault did at Goodwood when they started Alonso’s car in the pits and even better the music of sports-cars at Le Mans screaming round La Sarthe for a day and a night each year in June.

Happy days, happy times and I wouldn’t have any of those memories if it were not for my Dad. Our trip to Brands for my first ever Formula One experience probably didn’t start my passion for cars, Dad had done that a long time before but it most definitely went a long way to cementing a very special relationship with the world on four wheels.