12/03/2001
FEATURE BY CHRIS BALFE
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Editor Chris Balfe remembers the 1970 BOAC 1000 Kilometres - Brands Hatch, 12 April 1970
Since there have only been a couple of Malaysian Grands Prix to date, I am afforded the luxury of self indulgence this week, for my chosen race is not a Grand Prix, indeed it's not even a Formula One race.
At a time when the tabloids, along with certain sections of the motorsport media, seem to be working themselves into a lather about safety, I want to take you back to a time when men were men and racing was racing.
A couple of years ago I saw 'When We Were Kings', the docu-movie based around the classic 1974 Muhammad Ali - George Foreman 'rumble in the jungle'. If it were possible to put a movie together based on today's classic race it would have to be called, 'When We Were Gods'.
It's Sunday 12th April 1970. I'm 16 and on my way to watch a race that will live in my memory for ever more. The weather is unbelievable; it's been raining all night and there's no sign of any let up. To make matters worse, when I arrive at Swanley I find there are no buses going to the circuit, perhaps they thought nobody would venture out on a day like this, they were wrong. As I start the long trek to the circuit (already soaked to the bone), I contemplate what should be a classic confrontation, Porsche versus Ferrari.
Of the two rounds of the International Championship for Makes thus far, Porsche and Ferrari have each tasted victory. At Daytona, Pedro Rodriguez and Leo Kinnunen stormed home in their Gulf-Porsche 917, while at Sebring, Mario Andretti, Ignazio Giunti and Nino Vaccarella had done the honours for Ferrari in their 512S.
Round three, the BOAC 1000km at Brands Hatch promised another clash of the titans. The two works Ferrari 512s were driven by Chris Amon/Arturo Merzario and Jacky Ickx/Jackie Oliver, whilst the privately entered Filipinetti car had Mike Parkes and Herbert Muller at the wheel. These six men faced the beast that was the Porsche 917, to this day one of the most powerful and awesome racing machines ever built.
The Gulf cars were driven by Daytona victors Rodriguez/Kinnunen and Jo Siffert/Brian Redman, while the works Porsches were to be driven by Vic Elford/Denny Hulme and Hans Herrmann/Richard Attwood, with David Piper entering a further 917 for himself and David Hobbs.
The field also included a couple of Lola T70s, Matra 650s and Porsche 908s plus half a dozen Chevrons, however attention centred on the confrontation between the 917s and the 512s.
Chris Amon sat on pole in the 512S, whilst behind him sat Siffert, Ickx and Elford. As the rain continued to fall the race got underway. Elford blasted into the lead followed by Ickx and Amon. This was utter madness, the conditions were atrocious and the rain showed no sign of abating. After a couple of laps, Ickx who had taken the lead from Elford, had to pit in order to get his windscreen wipers adjusted. Elford re-established himself at the front of the field, only to be passed by Amon on lap 17. We had already seen several cars spinning off and it was certain that the race would not run the full distance! how wrong we were.
Pedro Rodriguez in the meantime had been called into the pits for the '70's version of a ten second penalty. It turned out that Pedro, who blamed the lack of visibility due to the dreadful conditions, had ignored the yellow flags following an earlier incident and was therefore read the riot act by the clerk of the course Nick Syrett. Following the lecture, Pedro stormed out of the pits missing Syrett's toes by a few inches. The rest as they say is history.
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Rodriguez took the lead on lap 20 and was never seen again. The fiery Mexican drove the monstrous 917 until just before the 3 1/2 hour mark, when Kinnunen took over. The second placed car at that point (the Siffert/Redman 917) was two laps behind. Every time Pedro came through Clearways your heart was in your mouth.. this man was making the impossible seem easy. Driving in such conditions defied all logic, this was the stuff of legends. Even Pedro got caught out occasionally though, at one point both his and Elford's car performing a synchronised spin as they exited Druids, such grace, such danger.
Every time he approached Clearways, the corner where I stood transfixed, for a fleeting second he aimed his car straight at me, I could almost see the whites of his eyes, then at the last nano-second he'd "chink" to the right, it was heart stopping. At one point I reached into my bag for the sandwiches my mother had made; only to find a couple of field-mice had beaten me to it, who cared! I didn't want to take my eyes off the track anyway!
At the end (after almost 7 hrs) Rodriguez came home five laps clear of the second placed 917 of Elford, with the Attwood/Herrmann car a further three laps behind. It didn't bother me that my beloved Ferrari's were beaten, only one man deserved the honours that day, Pedro Rodriguez.
A year later, Pedro was killed in a non-championship Sports Car race. In those days drivers lived, and often died, for their racing. If there wasn't a Grand Prix on at the weekend a driver would look for any alternative be it Formula Two or Sports Cars, the thought of racing on just seventeen Sundays a year would have filled these men with horror.
With nothing else doing, Pedro accepted an offer from Herbert Muller to drive his Ferrari 512S at the Norisring. Despite qualifying second, Rodriguez took the lead, and was heading for a comfortable win, when he crashed. The exact cause of the accident has never been discovered. Perhaps Pedro's racing instinct can best be summed up by his great friend Jo Ramirez, now team co-ordinator with McLaren, who said: "That's how Pedro was. If anybody offered him a wheelbarrow to race, he would go and race it."
How ironic, that Rodriguez the man who along with Jo Siffert tamed the Porsche 917, was killed in a Ferrari. Less than a week after his death, Derek Bell drove one of the Porsche 917s around Silverstone before the British GP as a mark of respect. I cried that day! I wasn't alone.
Watching the tribute was Pedro's great rival from John Wyer Automotive, and BRM F1 team-mate, Jo 'Seppi' Siffert. Jo died in a horrendous accident at Brands Hatch just a few months later in a race that was meant to be a 'friendly'. A non-championship event to celebrate Jackie Stewart's second title.
Imagine if you will a day of F1 celebration, where fans come to pay tribute to their new champion. As well as a celebrity race in which we see the likes of Ken Tyrrell and Max Mosley take on F1 'names' such as Colin Chapman, Frank Williams and John Surtees in identical Ford Escort Mexicos. There is an F3 event featuring future stars such as James Hunt, Jody Scheckter, Alan Jones, Roger Williamson and David Purley, together with a parade lap by members of the title winning Tyrell team. It's worth noting that the race programme pays tribute to the fifteen men and one woman that made up the entire Tyrrell Formula One racing team! that's sixteen people!
The highlight of the day is a forty lap race featuring some of the best F1 stars including Stewart and Cevert (Tyrrell), Ronnie Peterson (March) Graham Hill (Brabham), Emerson Fittipaldi (Lotus), John Surtees and Mike Hailwood (Surtees), together with a number of top F5000 racers including Brian Redman, Graham McRae and Frank Gardner. On the fifteenth lap, Siffert running in fourth behind Stewart, Fittipaldi and Gethin, lost control and crashed in to the earth banking at Hawthorn.
What should have been a carnival of celebration became a tragedy of nightmarish proportions. It's believed that Siffert tangled with Ronnie Peterson's March at the start of the race and that the BRM suffered damage to its rear suspension. On the fifteenth lap, on one of the fastest parts of the circuit, something broke. The car veered to the left, hit the earth banking and burst into flames as it rolled over.
What followed is still hard to believe, and those of you who think that the death of Graham Beveridge was hard to take and senseless had better look away now, for Siffert's only injury in the crash was a fractured ankle. Yet as he lay trapped upside down in the burning BRM he was slowly suffocating through lack of oxygen. When the marshals arrived on the scene it was found that two of the fire extinguishers weren't working, and by the time the fire had finally been extinguished, it was already too late. As the dark smoke filled the sky, the carnival came to a sudden end and the celebratory cheers became cries of anguish.
At Siffert's funeral, less than a week later, the Swiss driver's Porsche 917 in its blue and orange Gulf livery, formed part of the cortege.
I have never forgotten Pedro's epic performance at Brands Hatch that day, and over thirty years later I still feel privileged to have witnessed men such as Rodriguez and Siffert in such awesome machinery.
I now regularly attend events such as the Goodwood Festival of Speed and Coys where along with others I gain tremendous satisfaction from seeing heroes such as Ickx, Amon, Regazzoni, Gonzalez, Gurney, Brabham, Surtees, Fittipaldi et al in the flesh. However there are so many heroes that never made it, drivers such as Pedro, Jo, Jochen, Jimmy, Ronnie and Gilles.
At a time when many race fans seem obsessed with the cult of Schumacher, Hakkinen, Montoya and Button, I just wanted to take the opportunity to tell you about some of my heroes, drivers whose exploits never got televised on a regular basis, drivers whose deaths warranted just a few lines of copy in the national newspapers. Gods.