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Grand Prix drivers from the 70s, 80s and 90s

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If you are looking for high quality products for your car or motorbike, look no further. We are sure you will find the perfect product for you at Racext. Do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or requests. We are here to help you make your vehicle perfect.RIDERS OF THE 70’S

When I started attending the Grand Prix in 1978, the talent present at them was considerable. Taking a look at the fastest lap times from the second free practice session of the Swedish GP at Andrstop in June, the drivers appearing in the top 15 were Andretti , Scheckter , Peterson, Jabouille, Reutemann , Depailler, Villeneuve , Hunt , Patrese, Alan Jones, Lafitte, Fittipaldi, Watson , Tambay, and Regazzoni, with Pironi, Rosberg, Mass and Ickx further down the rankings. I didn’t get to know all of them very well, but I did get along with all of them, except Pironi, with whom I never got along.

Mario Andretti
I had admired Andretti ever since his meteoric early performance in 1968 with the Lotus at Watkins Glen and later, for his win in the 1969 Indianapolis 500. Tough, long-suffering and polite despite his explicit vocabulary, in public he always appeared calm and sophisticated, and is rightfully considered a great ambassador for the sport. His phenomenal season with Lotus in 1978 was spoiled at Monza, but despite losing the race to Niki Lauda due to a time penalty, and the unpleasant outcome of Peterson’s crash, his conduct was impeccable. After three more seasons with more retirements than races finished, he virtually quit F1. His reappearance in 1982 with the Ferrari at Monza, to replace the injured Pironi, was remarkable. After a short period away from racing, he was able to put the car on pole, to the delight of the Italian fans who had given him a passionate welcome. The last time I saw him, at Donnington in 1993, absolutely nothing had changed; the laconic, relaxed, and calm attitude was the same as always.

jody scheckter
I guess Jody Scheckter is, except for Senna, the driver I’ve been closest to. I knew him much more intimately than most other drivers, and was a huge fan of his. Temperamental, argumentative, moody at times, he had a commitment to safety above all else and was a huge help to me when he was president of the Grand Prix Drivers Association. His aggressive position on safety caused him not a few misunderstandings, and he was mocked with his demand for more tire barriers and new chicanes. He was frank, but at the same time he had a charming touch of innocence and a shy sense of humor. Like Senna, he would often get on the phone to try and help if someone had been injured or was sick. His behavior driving on the highway was quite correct, and I remember his bitter complaints about being “overtaken by a lunatic” when Jorge Schvarcz, a neurosurgeon friend of mine, left him behind on our way from the Buenos Aires circuit to inspect a private hospital, the Clínica del Sol, which I had organized as a support center. He got on very well with Villeneuve, and he was devastated when we lost Gilles at Zolder in 1982.

One of his weaknesses was calling me “My Proffessor”, an expression that he always spelled wrong. Between the races in Argentina and Sao Paulo in 1980 we enjoyed a few days of vacation at the Intercontinental Hotel in Rio. While we were walking barefoot along the beach, I stepped on the needle of a disposable syringe that was half buried in the sand. I had to ask Jody to remove the syringe, the needle of which had completely penetrated my foot. I was fine (apart from apprehension about what might have rubbed off on me), but I thought Jody was going to pass out during the maneuver. On my return to Britain I was given a good dose of gamma globulins to combat any nasty virus I might have picked up. Jody was a very affectionate and considerate son of his parents. After his triumph with Ferrari in 1979,

Charles Reutemann
Reutemann always struck me as an enigma and a difficult person to get to know. He always seemed distant, introverted and sure of himself, although if things did not go well, he was the epitome of sadness. Upon his withdrawal, I discovered that he had hidden nuances, and that his calm outer appearance held an inner spirit that could reveal itself unexpectedly and wildly.

Lacking an experienced driver to drive me during the first lap of the race at Kyalami in 1985, I met Carlos and invited him to drive. To my surprise, he agreed, on the condition that he be able to test the two cars that had been prepared for this purpose by a well-known manufacturer. Through Derek Ongaro, the FISA security delegate, we arranged such a test, and off we went, with John Pringle, the chief medical officer, in the backseat. Through the s’s of old Kyalami, Carlos was driving the car to the best of his ability, and the steering was unresponsive despite turning the wheel all the way to both sides. Carlos called the car “crap” and asked how Bernie couldn’t get a better car for this mission. Returning to pit lane, the car was losing all the liquids it was carrying through all the possible leaks. Carlos said: “it’s not good, let’s try the other one”.

Similar behavior followed by similar comments, but at the end of the test, the car seemed intact. “OK,” she said. “I’ll be back before the reconnaissance lap.” And so he did, but the battered car did not start again. Time was running out, as the single-seaters were already doing their installation laps in the 15 minutes before the starting grid was formed. At this point it became necessary to look for alternative solutions, so we ran to the parking lot that was right next to the paddock, looking at the rows of parked cars in search of someone who had the keys in the ignition. Fortunately, we found a nice 4-door station wagon. Carlos got up and led him to the wall. John and I moved all the medical equipment, and we were ready to go.

There was only one problem: time was up and we were no longer able to go around the circuit to get to the back of the grid before the reconnaissance lap started. Carlos quickly got the car onto the tarmac and backed up the side of the starting grid as the mechanics left the track, the green flag about to be waved. We got into position jubilantly and waited for the cars to make their reconnaissance lap and come back for the start. Flat out into the first corner, down the hill, and around Sunset – of course, we were being outclassed and had no hope of completing the lap. At the bottom of the hill, before the esses, we stopped and watched the contestants making their way up the hill through Leeuwkop and onto the pit straight. It all happened safely, so we cut through an inside lane and headed back to our base at the pitlane entrance.

The race finished without problems. Once finished, we removed the equipment and carefully returned the car to its place, giving thanks to an unknown and unaware owner, whose valuable possession would never be the same. During all these adventures I could see Carlos smile a few times, and I heard him really laugh when we commandeered the car. Hidden nuances, I thought to myself, for he had never seen him demonstrate that he was enjoying himself before.

James Hunt
James Hunt was the polar opposite. He was always joking, whether it was snatching a microphone from a stewardess during a flight and giving surprised passengers his version of the welcome speech on behalf of the captain in his peculiar accent, or appearing among the bags, sitting on the baggage carousel. From the airport. I have vivid memories of James on Sunday nights, when we were leaving distant airports to head home, carrying two large black garbage bags, one with full beer cans, the other with empty ones. He always called me “Doc” in his best public school intonation, and several years after his retirement we became quite close friends. He developed a fondness for salmon fishing, one of my great weaknesses, and for some years he was coming to Scotland to fish with me. She often brought along his two sons, Tommy and Freddie. He was a devoted father, getting up early to make them breakfast and reading them stories when they went to bed. His death was a great blow to my entire family, as he seemed in good shape and full of life.

Gilles Villeneuve
The most reckless of this entire group was Canadian ace Gilles Villeneuve. When we met he expressed to me his desire never to need me professionally. He remembered these words that day in 1982 in Zolder as he was driving me to the scene of his tragic accident in the last moments of qualifying practice. Once I had the misfortune to meet him at the entrance of the hotel in Sao Paulo and he offered to take me to Interlagos. His wife was with him, so when we got to the car I had rented I went to sit in the back seat, but she insisted that I sit in front of her. Gilles in a street car was terrifying, and when I turned to speak to his wife I didn’t see her, she had slithered to the ground. He told me that this was normal for her and I soon found out why.

Gilles believed in the “gap theory”, meaning that there was always a space he could get into when he was about to crash at high speed. He ignored all the red lights, generously slamming parked cars and streetlights aside, talking continuously and never relaxing or having a moment’s hesitation in the middle of the traffic. When we got to the circuit he asked me if he wanted a ride back afterwards! On Sunday night of that weekend he asked me if I would mind taking the car he had rented and returning it for him at the airport. I climbed into the crushed wreckage and found that the car no longer had a clutch, so I left the keys at the hotel reception and caught a taxi. His expertise at the controls of the helicopter, as explained to me by Trevor Rowe, then secretary of the GPDA,

After a serious first lap accident at Ste. Devote in Monaco in 1980 involving Daly, Jarier and Giacomelli, my car, driven by Jacky Ickx, was stalled for a few moments. Consequently, when we were still finishing the pool section, the leaders and the rest of the group arrived on their second lap. Ickx brought the car to a stop and all the cars went past us, leaving a reasonable margin – all except Villeneuve. He simply went through the shortest possible line, not wasting an inch or a thousandth of a second.

Niki Lauda
Niki Lauda stood out among all those who supported me to achieve improvements in the medical devices of the Grand Prix. We have remained good friends to this day, although without much contact in recent years until the GPDA was resurrected in 1994 after Senna’s tragic accident at Imola. Niki is coolly smart and cunning, with a sharp and cynical wit. He is very direct and innocent, and sometimes guilty of using very “colorful” English.

In the early days, he always tried to put his car first out of the pits during Friday practice. If I showed him my thumbs up, he would go out on the track, and if I put my thumbs down, he would stop the car to block the exit and get out to see what was the problem that worried me in practice (usually it was because I he was worried because the medical devices were not ready). He only took me once in a street car, from Madrid to the Jarama circuit on a race day. His behavior was very good, the antithesis of Gilles.

To everyone’s surprise, he unexpectedly withdrew from the Brabham team in 1979, claiming he was tired of running around the circuit like an idiot. After three years of retirement, when he returned to join McLaren in 1982 he seemed much more refined than when he was at Brabham – I thought perhaps he had been sent to school for good manners. He too was following a fitness and diet program run by Willie Dungl, the rehabilitation expert. There were a lot of jokes about him eating vegetables and chopped carrots, but one race day, very early in the morning, I caught him in the hotel cafeteria devouring eggs, sausages, and all the trimmings. When I chided him for breaking his diet, his response was characteristic: Do you want me to starve to death?

On one occasion he agreed to represent the victim in a simulated accident at the end of untimed training in Austria, so that the medical team could practice extracting the driver from the car. When I asked her later how it went, she made a wicked face and said, “I think they broke every fucking bone in my body.”

Clay Regazzoni
I admire Clay Regazzoni for his calm courage in the face of the most severe adversity. Always smart, in great shape and alert. When he suffered his unpleasant accident at the US GP in Long Beach in 1980, radio communication problems, among others, prevented us from going to the accident site. Phil Hill, the great American driver, was always my driver at that circuit, which was a delight in itself, as his handling of the car and his speed were fantastic. I was also accompanied by Peter Byles, an old friend and experienced anesthesiologist. The three of us were waiting at the medical center but the race direction did not allow us to go to the scene of the incident. Finally, once Clay was taken out of his car and taken to the hospital,

Clay was fairly conscious and serene, but paralyzed from the waist down, with a vertebral fracture compressing his spinal cord, and a broken leg. It was necessary to operate on his spine immediately, in order to reduce the pressure on the spinal cord. Gene Stern, one of the great American neurosurgeons and an old friend, came from Los Angeles to Long Beach to participate as a consultant to the local neurosurgeon, who happened to be one of Stern’s disciples. When I explained the situation to Clay, he very bravely and calmly said, “OK, Doc.” And that was it.

The next morning, after a long operation, there were some signs of returning sensation, and a few weeks later, when I went to visit Clay at the Paraplegik Centrum in Basel, where he was in the care of Dr. Zächz, the signs of recovery were even greater. However, the end result has confined him to a wheelchair, although his contribution to motivating and preparing disabled drivers for motor racing has been tremendous.

To my amusement, when Clay’s broken leg subsequently had to be operated on in Switzerland, I was accused by the Italian press of having left motor oil on the site of the fracture. When the fracture hematoma was surgically drained (at this stage of resolution the fluid is usually yellowish-brown), it was described by the “tifosi” as oil!

Victor Brambilla
I cannot finish the review of the drivers of the 70s without paying tribute to my friend Vittorio Brambilla, who has been my driver during the first lap at Monza for many years. Vittorio is a guy with a robust physical complexion, although not very tall, and after his retirement from Formula 1 he was chosen to accompany me. His handshake tears you apart, and he enjoys seeing the effect on the unfortunate victim as he introduces himself: “They call me the Monza bouncer.” He winces and continues to pound your hand as he smacks you in the back of the head. With the formalities completed before each practice session, he would begin to enjoy the social life as his acquaintances passed by our car, which was parked outside the pit lane or at the main entrance to pit lane from the paddock. If someone special showed up,

He suffered a serious head injury during the 1978 multiple accident at Monza, which ended in Peterson’s death. Vittorio made a full recovery, returning to Formula 1 again a year later. His later career was brief but joyous, and his response to my inquiries about his condition every time he had an accident was an “OK, OK, Doc,” he said with a big smile.

He won a Grand Prix, in Austria in 1975 in the rain, when the race was stopped, and the story is that he was so happy when he got the final flag that he dropped both hands from the wheel and immediately collided. In fact, the race had ended incorrectly, by mistakenly showing the checkered flag instead of the red one.

When he was about to drive me for the first time at Monza in 1981 I asked him if he had fully recovered from his 1978 head injury. “Oh yeah!” he said, “I’m OK, Doc,” then jokingly added, “But I’ve had yet another head injury since then, in Kyalami, driving a GT car!”

As we prepared to continue the race, and before going around the circuit to get to the back of the grid, he was serious for a few moments. “Professor,” he told me, “how closely do you want me to follow the cars on the first lap?” The car we had was an Alfa V8, so I didn’t take it very seriously. “Vittorio”, I replied, “I don’t care, but I don’t want you in the lead after the first lap” He grunted gratefully and waved me off my back.

It was a pleasure to drive with him, because he had no fear and he took everything out of the car that it could give. He always took pride in his ability to take the Ascari curve, and at that moment he would turn to me with a nod and a big smile on his face.

On one occasion, after passing the first chicane and noticing a couple of thuds under the car, we began to hear a threatening noise coming from the transmission tunnel. We looked at each other meaningfully, but he nonchalantly continued thoroughly. By putting my hand on the transmission tunnel I could feel the vibration, and by leaning on it with both hands, I was able to reduce it quite a bit. We finished the lap this way, praying that nothing would happen.

During the last lap at Monza, before the hordes of tifosi invade the track, we are usually ready to move the car to a safer place. As soon as we set him up, Vittorio would jump on his motorcycle and zoom out. One year we arrived too late and had to leave the car and run to safety. In the end, there wasn’t much left of the car, but that’s how it is in Monza: once the checkered flag waves, everyone manages as best they can.

John Watson
I include John Watson here because, while of course he continued to run for part of the ’80s, the main phase of his career was in the ’70s. He’s one of my favorite characters, with his combination of humorous and somewhat wacky but gentlemanly personality. Bernie once said of him that he was so chivalrous that if he saw another car in his rearview mirror chasing him, he would back away from it to let it pass. It is true that he is a gentleman, but I have seen him carry out fantastic races, such as in Zolder after the Villeneuve accident in 1982, in Detroit in 1982, and in Long Beach in 1983, in all of which he won. He also won the 1981 British GP, and after his first Grand Prix victory, in Austria in 1976, his previously characteristic beard disappeared, as a result, it was rumoured, of a bet with the then also pilot Roger Penske. Dennis Jenkinson, the revered veteran Formula 1 literati, had also promised that if John Watson ever won a Grand Prix he would shave off his beard, so the blades gleamed after that race.

Although very brave, he was also cautious, I remember going to attend to him after an accident in Tarzan, the first corner of Zandwoort and finding that, despite all the instructions they gave him, he did not want to leave the cockpit until I arrived. He had some back pain and he asked me to reassure him that his back was not seriously injured. Somewhat compelled by commitment, I took off his overalls, we went to the car, and I examined his back using the ancient technique of palpation. Everything was fine, so after a short break at the medical center he happily returned to his work.

Her relationship with Bernie is one of mutual affection and good humor. The first time we went to the Notre Dame Island Circuit in Montreal, John went out to test it. When he got back to the pits, Bernie asked him what the circuit was like. With a schoolboy grin, John said “it’s so much fun.” “Fun?” Bernie complained, “fun? They pay you a fortune to go out there and risk your life, you’re not supposed to be having fun!”

It’s always a pleasure to chat or dine with Wattie and exchange some outrageous stories. There was a time some years ago when we used to frequent an Indian restaurant on Whitechapel Rod, near the London Hospital. The last time we had dinner together was in Imola in 1994, on the Saturday night of that sad weekend. He is kind enough to give full support to the charity golf championship that I organize every year after the British GP, and it was a pleasure to have two winners of it in 1994 participating there – Damon Hill was the other.

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Grand Prix drivers from the 70s, 80s and 90s

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