Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Pit Stop: David Hobbs on 1960s British Club Racing & the White Ferrari GTO

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Pit Stop: David Hobbs on 1960s British Club Racing & the White Ferrari GTO · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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We always have a blast chatting with our guests about all sorts of different
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topics, but sometimes we go off the rails and dig deeper into their
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automotive and motor sports pasts.
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As a bonus, let's go behind the scenes with this pit stop mini
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episode for some extra content that didn't quite fit in the main episode.
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Sit back and enjoy and remember to like, subscribe and
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support break fix on Patreon.
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It is always fun to get back together with John, the motoring historian, and
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William from the Exotic Car Marketplace.
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But today is extra special because we are gonna take a deep dive into
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1960s British Club racing with.
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None other than legendary pro driver and commentator David Hobbes.
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So I wanna welcome David Hobbes back to break Fix as we dive into this
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interesting part of Motorsports history.
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Well, good afternoon, gentlemen.
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Thank you for inviting me for a, a recap of 60 odd years ago.
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Well, David, this comes about because John, William and I have been working
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on a project about John Coombs and his famous white Ferrari, two 50
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GTO, and when we were digging into the history, you start to realize
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how small the motor sports world is.
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Your name starts popping up because that's when your career
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was starting to come about.
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And so we figured, well, let's ask a living legend about living history.
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So let's dive into British Club racing in the 1960s.
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Can you take us back?
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Well, British Club racing in the 1960s was actually very, very healthy.
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And of course, in those days it really was club racing.
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The first two cars I drove in 1959, I drove by Mums Morris Oxford.
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Which was hardly a racing car.
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I drove it, took it from the tracks when I didn't have it towed, how that is.
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And in 1960, I drove my dad's XK one 40.
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But unfortunately I was so naive and, uh, so raw that I had never quite
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understood the, uh, ports of racing tires.
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And I raced out on Michel X. In the very first race with I ever turned
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at, at Alton Park on the last lap of a GT race and was outta the race.
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I, I modified that 'cause I was actually a Jaguar apprentice at the time.
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I had started off buying, being a Damer apprentice, but then I became
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a Jaguar apprentice 'cause of my dad's affiliation with Daimler,
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with his, uh, automatic gearbox.
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I, you know, I, I chose the school, so I couldn't go to university,
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so I became an apprentice.
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But of course, I got so involved in the racing and luckily, loft England,
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who was the managing director of Jaguar when I became a Jaguar apprentice, was
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the team manager who won Lamont for.
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Jag in 1950, what?
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Five, six, and seven.
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Lofty was a team manager.
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He had worked his way through the company and by the time I was the apprentice,
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he was the managing director, but he also was a clerk of the course,
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what you'd call a chief steward at lots of silvers to the club racers
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run by the British racing driver.
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Luckily for me, lofty took rather fancy to my driving style,
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and so he was a great help.
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I had, uh, a funny incident and the apprentice supervisor, whose name was
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Harold Barker called me into his office and tore me off a strip and said I
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was the worst apprentice I'd ever had.
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I was never there.
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I'd ever went to tech, I'd ever passed any examiners, which I didn't.
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I. I did spend a lot of time at the racetrack.
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By 1961, I was driving the Low Elite, which my father's company had bought
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me to help promote the gearbox because it had dad's automatic gearbox in it.
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So although Harold Barker tore me off this terrible strip, just said,
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I dunno what you're gonna do ho.
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He said, I think I just don't see a life for you.
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You're gonna be probably be homeless.
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And he said, you're absolutely completely useless.
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Well, luckily a couple of weeks later I was working in experimental
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department and the foreman called me.
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I was, says here, Hobbs.
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He says, Mr. England wants to see you in his office.
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So I thought, oh, blindly.
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This seems got a bit outta hand now.
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So I went up to the office and Lofty said, oh Hobbs, we have an experimental car.
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We have a prototype car, and we'd rather like you to take
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to silver to drive it for us.
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Would would you be able to do that?
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I said, I'm sure I could.
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So, so the next thing, I'm walking through the main office block with
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the Lofty England as the managing director with, uh, Jim Haynes, who
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was the, uh, chief engineer at Jaguar.
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Wally Hassen, who was the chief engineer man, and, uh, Mike McDowell, who
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was the competition manager for Ja.
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And we walked past Mr. Barker's office and I was there.
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He was look in the door while I'm walking down with all these heavy hitters and say,
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oh, afternoon, Mr. Barker's still here.
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That was the high point of my apprenticeship.
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Anyway, we did go testing and Michael Parks, if you remember the name, Michael
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Parks was going to run me that afternoon.
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He and his girlfriend were there and his girlfriend.
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Ultimately became Enzo Ferrari's personal secretary.
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And she is still alive and kicking, apparently living in Italy and
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I just can't remember her name.
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But she was a very bright young spark and uh, Michael was very attracted to her.
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But anyway, I spun the car going through the old Abbey curve, which in those days
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was pretty much a flat out lefthander.
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It's gone now, but I spun it the flat spot, all the tires 'cause
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they hadn't got his spare tires.
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So we went back to the factory.
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So during 1961, dad had a bit of a windfall in the
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Westinghouse breaker signal.
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Bought some shares in the company and I thought it'd be a great idea if we raced
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the loads of elite with the gearbox, which of course the big thing about
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dad's box was it was the four speed, the friction drive, no fluid drive.
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So it used very little power.
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It had four speeds with automatic or and full manual override.
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So it made a perfect racing mops and we were very successful in the Loads League.
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Well, or races.
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Of course, during that time, lofting was a, was a big supporter, and when
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I finished my apprenticeship at the end of 1961, a lot of things happened.
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The Army draft finished at the end of 61.
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I finished my apprenticeship in December the 31st, and I got
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married on December the 16th.
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And Lofty had got me a professional drive with a guy called Peter
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Berry who had a 3.8 mark, two Sudan and an XKE, both in green.
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Bruce McLaren had driven for him in 1960 and he asked me to drive for in 1961
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and Lofty got me that drive in 1962.
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So when I left apprenticeship, I got up to a flying start with my racing
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career by driving for Peter Barry.
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And of course our biggest competitor, one of our big competitors, was for
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two big competitors, a key endeavor, which is run by a guy called Tommy.
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So with, and John Coon.
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So I met John Coons fairly soon.
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You know, after leaving Jag.
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He knew that Lofty England knew me and thought a lot about me.
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Funnily enough, in my last year while the apprentice supervisor was slagging
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me off, I got a call to see if I'd go to entry because it was the British
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Grand Prix today entry, and one of the supporting races was a GT race.
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And I rushed up there.
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He said, can you go and drive for Tommy?
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Sat with an Ike endeavor, E type, and of course I rushed up to Adrian.
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By the time I got there, Jack Sears, who was another very,
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very, very good amateur driver.
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I mean, he is a farmer, but he was a hell of a driver.
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Unfortunately, Jack Sears was also there and he hadn't gotta drive that weekend.
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So before I got there, they had actually put him in the car.
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They did gimme some lapse in it.
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I was a bit nervous 'cause I'd never driven a big car before.
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I'd only ever driven the elite, so I was used to about 85 horsepower, not whatever.
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The Jag gave a couple of hundred, 250, something like
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that, and a much bigger vehicle.
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Obviously John Coons was there at that meeting as well because Graham Hill
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was driving John Coombs as E type.
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This is before the Ferrari came along.
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Coombs was very successful.
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Graham Hill drove for him in the, uh, in the 3.8, mark two, which was also white.
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He drove for him an E type, which was white, and then of course they got the.
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The two 50 GTO, which of course was a hell of a car, and they had some
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very spirited races with people like Tommy, who was a pretty good driver.
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Michael Parks drove for him.
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Obviously, he was a very good driver and some chap called
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Sterling Roth drove for him as well.
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In in the number seven before the GTO, he had a, a Ferrari, uh, two 50 short
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wheel base, which was a hell of a car.
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Those races used to be really exciting because they were very, very.
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Compared to today.
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I mean, these were modified street cars.
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You could take the seats out or you could put lighter seats in
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and you could do other weight saving, but you couldn't do much.
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They didn't.
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They didn't have a space frame like most race cars do today, so they were much
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more difficult to actually get stiffener.
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The chassis were never stiff.
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But it made them very exciting racing and the, and the public loved it, and
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John Coombs was a huge part of that.
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David, there is so much to unpack here.
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I'm sure we all have questions.
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Our understanding is that Coombs bought this GTO because the
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E type was not competitive.
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And in an interview that John Coombs had with.
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Simon Taylor from Motorsport Magazine 15 years ago now.
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He says that he had a meal with Bill Haynes, where he said to Bill Haynes
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that this car's like a pendulum.
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If you don't make it lighter, I am going to have to race my Ferrari.
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And coming outta that lunch, this white Ferrari apparently spent
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the winter of 1962 at Jaguar.
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Evolving and this process gave us the lightweight e type.
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That's what we think happened.
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Do you have any insight on that or were you in Daytona meeting,
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bill France at that time?
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I'm afraid I don't have any insight on that.
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No.
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Uh, that would've been above my pay grade, but I couldn't believe that a
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lot of people have done that, taken cars that take 'em apart, and obviously the
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lightweight E type was very, very good.
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It still wasn't quite as good as the Ferrari.
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I dunno whether it had a bit less power.
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The V 12 and the Ferrari was a great engine and the
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chassis was pretty good too.
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The uh, GTO was in the end was quicker than the lightweight.
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Now obviously, lightweight E types now have evolved enormously.
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They're not really jags anymore.
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They're so different.
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But, uh, yeah, so I can, I can believe that being true.
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And John Cobs is a huge, huge Jaguar fan, so I know he would've liked
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to have made the Jaguar faster than the Ferrari, because after all he
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was a Jaguar dealer in Guilford.
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I just want to touch on that.
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You talked about how a lot of the lightweights now are not really
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anything like they were years ago.
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I assume that for WPD.
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The Coombs car might be in that category.
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'cause you see it being raced at Goodwood all the time and
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it presents like a new car.
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I wonder if you, you are familiar with the cars at Revs, the Briggs
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Cunningham lightweight E type.
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Is that as far as you are aware, more like an original lightweight E that
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Briggs Cunningham car got a name.
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What's this type?
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Is it the EJ two or whatever it's called, the e something.
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I don't, I don't know.
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I I, I'm just trying to think of what, where would be like an
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original lightweight E Yeah, that would be a good comparison point.
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What we are thinking about is, can you look at this Ferrari and say,
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well, the guys at Jaguar obviously looked at this Ferrari and then made
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these changes to the Jaguar as a result, and therefore we need an early
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lightweight e point of comparison.
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I think really that the Jaguar we're trying to, uh.
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I don't know about crib, but to try and actually improve the E type by
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following some of the Ferrari practices, uh, rather than the other way around.
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I mean, I think the Ferrari was always the quicker of the two cars.
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Well, 'cause the E type in those days, they didn't have the
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material ology that you got today.
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These are E type straight sixes.
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Give over 400 horsepower.
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Well, when that straight six engine first came out, it gave about 160.
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So to give four 60 is a massive increase, which obviously you wouldn't
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be able to do with the original blocks, crank shafts and main eng,
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main bearings and that sort of thing.
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So the only reason they can do that is because of modern materials.
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You know, I mean, I don't know that the in outs and the depths of the.
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Cos England relationship or the Coombs Jaguar relationship.
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But I just know that John was a very, and at one stage he was talking about
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trying to get me in one of his cars.
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But of course, Graham was always there.
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And so that was, uh, unlikely to happen.
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But, uh, Coombs was always a very nice chap.
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Terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly posh.
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You know, it was a terrible English, terrible.
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Like myself, who's rather unc Coth very, very smooth and urban was our cobes.
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You told us that fabulous story a moment ago about, you know, walking past Mr.
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Barker's office with the chopped brass.
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Yeah.
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From Jaguar there.
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Yeah.
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Let's imagine our Ferrari arriving at Brown's Lane here.
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You know, when BMW buy a Tesla.
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They strip it down to the component parts and they measure all those
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component parts to do, you know, we imagine men in in white coats doing that.
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Is that what Brown's Lane was like?
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How many people did Lofty England or did Bill Haynes have?
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To be looking at this and what would the process have been like?
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Would they have driven it around on the streets?
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Would they have booked Silverstone for a day and driven it down
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to Silverstone to do that?
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What do you think that process would've looked like?
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Hard to help you there, but I mean, I worked in the experimental department
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at Jaguar, which is where all that type of person would've been, and
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there wasn't very many people in there.
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I mean, there's Mr. Walker who was the foreman.
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And uh, he was really a farmer.
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Obviously Bill Hayes would've been all over it and people like Mike Kimberly,
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who was an ex apprentice but was riding rapidly through the ranks and he ran the
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XJ 13 when I tested it at Myra in 1967.
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He was still a Jag, but by then he was one of the chief engineers.
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And of course she ultimately went to work for Lotus and ran
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Lotus for many, many years.
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So people like him would've been all over it, like it run, you know,
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looking at checking everything out.
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And like all engineers, my dad had terrible issues 'cause my dad
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was a fruit farmer from Australia.
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His father had a fruit farm, his grandfather had, it was
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an orange grove in Adelaide.
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And dad was one of nine children, seven of whom were boys.
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And it was assumed that he would just go into the business, so
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he didn't go to university.
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But it turned out from a very early age that he was a, a mechanical engineering
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kind of genius, and he invented that automatic gearbox entirely on his
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own and started when he was about 19, invented all sorts of mechanical.
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Machines 'cause of his day.
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You know, those early cars back in the, in the mid-teen 19
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teens, they were all crash boxes.
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He didn't think they were much good for women, so he thought they
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could probably have an automatic gearbox would be a good idea.
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So he started working on it when he was about 19 and he had this problem all the
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time that people would look at his stuff and say, well, Howard, you don't have
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a degree in, in mechanical engineering.
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Probably don't know enough about that and I, I can guarantee it.
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The people like Bill Hayes would've looked at that RA and say, oh, well
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we could have done that, or, or we wouldn't have done that, or whatever.
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They would look at it, but they would always be looking at it with
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slightly jaish eye it, which obviously some of it bought on by, I suppose.
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Jealousy.
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Why didn't, I think it, obviously you, you ran your dad's box in your car.
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Yeah.
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What other race cars did you guys try it out in?
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Or did someone start using it on a continuous basis?
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I mean, how much success did that have in the racing?
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Well, it had a lot of success, but dad always had the problem of
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manufacturing, you know, that everybody wanted him to make the gearbox.
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They didn't wanna make it themselves.
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Ford had a lot of prototypes.
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We never had the gearbox in any other racing applications except
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that race where I met Bill France.
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Jimmy Clark drove my load sleep in the GT rate in the very first, what
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was now the Rolex 12 hour, which was in those days, the continental
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three hour, which is what took me to Daytona just a few weeks after I was.
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Colin Chapman had called me back in like October and said, could we borrow your
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car for Jimmy Clark to drive in America?
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So they borrowed it.
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They flew in over there, they and Jimmy Clark drove it and he was leading
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the class by about five minutes.
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And unfortunately when he came here for a one and only fuel stop, the
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start had got Friday and it wouldn't start when dad's company finally
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went belly up at the end of 63.
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Which is just over a year and a half later on the floor on the shop
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floor was a five speed automatic Formula one car for Colin Chapman.
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So Colin Chapman had certainly tweaked that this was the way to go.
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Dad had had designed and developed and manufactured a gearbox for
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him, which never actually got used.
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But Dad spent a lot of time also with Jack Braman.
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Jack Braman came to see Dad on multiple occasions asking to
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talk to him about putting the automatic in the Formula One car.
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You know, it, it would've been perfect.
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I mean, obviously now with electronic controls instead of
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hydraulic, it would've been better.
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Obviously, you know, things have gone way further than dad had, but
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he was the first guy to build a four speed automatic transmission.
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Although, uh, Jim Hall gets the credit for having the first automatic racer.
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I'm not sure that I didn't beat him to it in 1959 with mum's boys up, but I'm sure.
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That will certainly go unheralded.
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Even if it was the case, we never, we never raced it in anything else.
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So let's go back to the club racing scene.
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I want to get a better understanding of what that meant because when we
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look back on the history with our eyes now, we see famous names, Graham
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Hill, Roy, Salvador, Jack, Sears, as you mentioned, racing in these race.
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The caliber of the racing and the British club racing scene.
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In my mind, I'm thinking when I hear club racing, I think SECA, like
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grassroots, amateur racing, but you already had these pro drivers in there.
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Was it a feeder system to something else?
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Were the pro drivers using it just to make money?
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Were they using it to jump off to bigger races like LAMA or
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SPA or something like that?
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Kind of tell us about how it worked.
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It certainly wasn't ever used.
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I mean, no professional driver ever went back at the club racing.
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We had a lot of races in England, which would be national races.
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They would be club racers sort to, but they'd be very high end club racing.
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Not really club racing.
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When you got people like Graham Hill, obviously Graham Hill started club racing.
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They all did.
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I mean, Jimmy Clark started in club racing.
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I did.
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Everybody did Sterling mos.
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Of course there was no go-karting, so you could take that outta the equation and
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nobody could start until they were 17 in England because you had to have a driving
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license before you could race a car.
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Unlike today, where you can race a four in one car when
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you're 12 if you got the skill.
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Yeah, some of that racing.
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In England there was, we had a lot of racing in England, which was
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a, was a very high level and it was basically semi-professional.
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Now the prize money was obviously negligible.
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Club racing, had no prize money.
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Very, very small cups.
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Trophies.
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You were in Leamington Spa.
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David, how far would you travel?
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Would you travel all the way up to Scotland for a race or, well, I never
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did, but I did go, uh, I think the farthest north I went was Alton Park
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and the far south I went was Goodwood.
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I never raced at Castle.
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Coon raced a lot of Silverson because it was close to home, which is at
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Leamington Park Race at Mallory Park.
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I don't even know that Mallory Parks exist.
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Race at Alton Park Ston.
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Dub that
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Mallory does say exists.
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I was there a couple of summers ago watching, uh, motorcycle racing.
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Oh yeah.
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Yeah.
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So got the front end light over the start finish.
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Yeah.
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I like Mallory Park.
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Yeah.
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Had some good race at Mallory.
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I won a race there.
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Load as things had moved on in 1965.
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I won the, I won the sports car race and load the T 70, which is a bit
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of a handful around Murray Park.
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So, I mean, I mean I drove, I drove the Jag and I drove the Morris
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to and from the races, the elite.
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We did have a two wheel trailer, but it was an open trailer.
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It was just a two wheel trailer, and I had a Ford Zephyr to pull it with.
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So we had about two spare wheels, maybe a jack and a hammer, and
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that was sort of about it really.
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Club racing in America.
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Now it's just so bizarrely.
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Club racing.
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I mean, everybody comes with a closed trailer and a mechanic and a manager and
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all sorts of high tech equipment and yeah, everybody got racing tires, obviously.
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But it is just a completely different situation to, uh, the club racing.
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I started with now club racing in England also has evolved and a modern club racing.
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I have no idea.
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I'm, I haven't been back to England for a club race for.
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40 years probably.
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So I don't follow it, but I'm sure it also has advanced enormously from my day.
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My day was real, real amateur stuff.
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No driver schools.
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Jim Ru started the first driver school at Sefton, but he didn't start that till.
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The mid sixties, it was very different and it really was club racing.
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Spent more time in the cafe, in the pub, in the bar after the racing we did.
20:35
Going back to John Coombs for a moment, when he took delivery of the Ferrari,
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you were already in the States, am I to understand that correctly?
20:43
Probably still there, but.
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I don't particularly remember him taking delivery of it.
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All I know is a grave hill suddenly appeared in it, you know, instead of
20:50
the lightweight, he'd suddenly eat type.
20:51
So having encountered John and, and you mentioned that he was a bit
20:54
posh, is there any reasoning behind the white paint that he chose?
20:58
Was it to stick out because he wanted to sell more cars if he raced on
21:01
Sunday, went on Monday sort of thing?
21:03
Or was there a reason behind the white?
21:05
No idea.
21:06
Probably didn't like it.
21:07
He used to wear very light gray suits or maybe light gray.
21:09
But what, let's talk a little bit more about the drivers.
21:13
I'm sure you've got some on your mind, William, that David has already
21:16
mentioned that we kind of wanna dig into a little bit more that either
21:20
owned this Ferrari or drove and raced this Ferrari at some point.
21:23
Well, I mean you get into, you know, obviously with the club racing, but at
21:26
what point to take that step up, was there something in between club racing and then
21:30
professional, obviously like, you know, Mike Parks and that, but then you had.
21:33
Jack Sears stepping up, but then you know, Roy Salvador and that jumping
21:37
in, I mean, where's that stuff?
21:38
Is it just a big leap from club racing all of a sudden now you're going against the
21:41
big guys or how did that kind of progress?
21:44
Absolutely, yeah.
21:45
I mean, you are racing, club racing and obviously it was a feed of
21:49
system of sorts beyond drivers.
21:51
Obviously there were some older drivers, not many, and a lot of
21:55
people that did club racing had no interest in going any further.
21:59
People like me and Jack Sears and Graham Hill and Jimmy Clark.
22:03
They had designed on, on going into professional racing, even though
22:07
there wasn't much money in it.
22:09
Really very little money at the time.
22:11
Well, I think when Jimmy Clark won the World Championship, the first
22:14
year he won, I think his total take was about a hundred thousand pounds.
22:19
You know, now we talk about drivers who are getting two and a half billion dollars
22:22
a race, but then a hundred thousand pounds back in 1962 was significantly,
22:27
yeah, would be a lot more than that now.
22:29
But I mean, yeah, I just won some races and then people started
22:33
asking me if I would drive for them.
22:35
In better club race club racers that might have some money attached.
22:39
And they would actually ask me how much money I wanted to drive, or they
22:43
would tell me how much, and I would say, well, how about 50 pounds more?
22:48
Or whatever.
22:48
And we'd sort of haggle over of the driving fee, which was pretty low.
22:52
It'd be somewhere between 25 and a hundred pounds.
22:56
But also in club racing, when you started to do well.
23:00
Like I did with the elite, the elite became successful, so
23:03
it became somewhat of a draw.
23:06
You could go to someone like Clive Worm Layton who ran Mallory Park and you
23:10
could ring him up and you say, look, I'm wanting to enter the the B-R-S-C-C race.
23:15
In May.
23:16
How about some starting money?
23:17
And they'd say, Ooh, I dunno about that.
23:19
People starting money.
23:21
And you'd say, well, I don't want much.
23:22
I didn't want like a hundred pounds.
23:23
And you'd finally, you'd settle on about 50 and so you would get some
23:27
money, but there was no prize money.
23:29
But there was what we call starting money, you know, appearance, money really
23:33
is what it was pretty low, but still.
23:36
Literally just pick up the phone and Yeah.
23:38
Yeah.
23:38
And call the track owner and, and say when you were planning the season Yeah.
23:43
Just to see where you could Yeah.
23:45
Called call the guys at Silverton and try and get some starting money.
23:50
Yeah.
23:50
Years ago, Orlando C told me that those of you that used to be like roll.
23:56
Representatives, or whatever the phrase was when asking for payment from a TV
24:01
company or a journalist or something.
24:03
What he used to do was he and Y and Mass, I think was the other guy used to
24:08
do it with, they would ask what Sterling asked for and then ask for half of that.
24:13
Now that gives the impression that everyone talked amongst themselves.
24:16
So would you talk with Graham Hill and if Graham Hill was getting a
24:19
hundred dollars starting money, you might ask for 50 or 75.
24:23
Was it like that?
24:24
Well, I wouldn't be talking to Graham Hill 'cause he would been above me, but I'd be
24:27
talking to other club drivers, people like Chris Ashmore and David Piper and Richard
24:31
Atwood, you know, people like that.
24:33
We were all, where we all started together.
24:35
Graham was a good bit ahead of me.
24:37
He is like four or five years ahead of me.
24:40
You know, I never get my first races when I drove in professional races and
24:44
I was driving against people like Graham Hill or Jack Sears, Michael Parks, you
24:49
know, I could find, hardly believe that I was actually in the same race that
24:52
they were in, you know, where they'd actually talk to me or say something.
24:55
You know, Graham Hill usually had somebody horrible to say.
24:57
But other than that, everybody else was fairly nice.
24:59
So
25:02
let's talk a little bit more about Jack Sears.
25:05
He owned the car for how long?
25:06
William?
25:06
Uh, he had it for a long time.
25:09
30 years.
25:09
What does he own?
25:10
The one car he owned that GTO for a long time, you know, after it kind
25:14
of, I guess you'd say retired from professional racing, you know, he took
25:17
it a lot of club racing and stuff.
25:18
But Jack owned that car for a long time.
25:21
Oh yeah.
25:21
After John Coombs had it.
25:23
Jack's his, seems to have had it all the way through the 1970s.
25:27
Oh, did he?
25:27
There's quite a lot of photographs of Jack Sears with the car painted red.
25:31
With it being around, uh, events.
25:33
I was sort of.
25:34
Surprise, the number plate is EUP.
25:37
And I've realized that it appeared in a number of books that I'd looked at
25:40
and I think I may have even seen it.
25:42
Uh, shows, believe it or not, I'm not really a huge car man.
25:47
I really only race 'cause I like the racing.
25:50
I'm very poor on cars.
25:51
You asked me what model that is.
25:52
I mean, I'd say I don't know I'm gonna, but I mean, Jack
25:57
Sears was a gentleman farmer.
25:58
He had a pretty big farm out in East Anglia, didn't he?
26:01
Hell of a driver and a, and a absolutely terrific guy.
26:04
I mean, he was such a g he was a real GI liked Jack a lot
26:08
and he was very, very fast.
26:10
But yeah, I, I didn't realize, I didn't realize he owned that car, but I see
26:14
it's gonna be an auction down here in Florida and then Yeah, in January at comb.
26:19
Yeah.
26:19
Yeah.
26:19
You know, going back in, obviously trying to make the jag make it turn into
26:23
lightweight to compete with the fraud, besides trying to improve the motor, get
26:26
more horsepower and making it lighter.
26:28
Do you know what else they attempted to do or did on that Jag to try and get
26:33
it more competitive with that Ferrari?
26:35
Not really.
26:35
I was doing on my own thing, so I, I don't really know, but I
26:39
mean I drove that XJ 13, which was gonna be their next big thing.
26:44
That's awesome.
26:45
By that time, Jaar was somewhat constrained by the fact they've now
26:48
become part of British Leland, and of course the guy that ran British
26:51
Leland, was it the Donald Stokes period?
26:54
Yeah.
26:55
Stokes exactly.
26:56
S he put the kibosh on the, uh, XJ 13.
27:00
He just said, forget it, put it away.
27:02
Because Richard Atwood and I, I, I drove it four or five times at Myra.
27:06
Mike Kimberley was the engineer in charge, and Malcolm Sayer, the, you
27:10
know, the renowned body work guy from Jag was there, and Sir William was there.
27:14
Lofty was there, obviously.
27:16
And a couple of mechanics and we ran it on Sunday morning at six o'clock
27:20
in the morning in sort of in secret.
27:23
Ultimately it was exposed.
27:24
We went to a test day at Silverstone and Richard Atwin and I drove it.
27:29
It was Richard's first time in it to give them a, a workless, you
27:32
know, of what needed to be done.
27:34
'cause we were running five or six seconds off things like GT forties.
27:38
And the reason that Lofty wanted me to test the car and not Norman Jewish,
27:43
who was the Jaguar test driver.
27:45
Because by that time I had driven GT forties, lower T seventies and
27:49
other big engine powerful stuff.
27:51
So he asked me to drive it.
27:53
Norman Dures never quite got over it.
27:55
He was pissed off to the end of his life that I'd driven the car.
27:58
What was the potential you feel for that car?
28:01
I mean, do you feel with enough work on it, you know, engineering, that that could
28:05
have been competitive with the GT forties?
28:07
Well, the best thing about it by a country mile was its engine.
28:11
It had the twin overhead cam version of the V 12, which back
28:15
in 1967 was giving 570 horsepower.
28:18
I mean, it was an incredible engine.
28:20
In 1967, the car was very ancient.
28:25
It had the E type type of suspension where the drive shaft is like your bottom link.
28:30
It had rubber bushings everywhere.
28:32
It had Dunlop disc brakes, and Dunlop hadn't made disc brakes for years.
28:36
It had like seven inch rims on the back and five inch rims on the front, where
28:40
now we replicate GT forces, which had got 11 or 12 inch rims on the back and it had
28:45
an all done up our five race tires on it.
28:47
So it was very difficult to get a really good feel of how good it was.
28:51
And of course, that Malcolm Sayer, that swoopy looking body was so
28:55
fantastic at Lamar back in the fifties when you know you were looking for
28:59
air, that you were looking for speed.
29:01
Relatively low horsepower, but you know, the days of downforce had
29:05
started to appear, the lower T 70 dad flaps on the front and they
29:09
had a, a, uh, spoiler at the back.
29:12
Just didn't have any of that.
29:13
This was very slippery, but probably had horrible lift at
29:16
speed, front end, lift at speed.
29:18
I think the car needed a lot.
29:19
Richard and I gave them a, a good work list, which would've helped obviously
29:23
decent sized wheels and tires, but made a. You've only gotta look at
29:26
the difference in Formula One between the soft tire and the medium tire for
29:30
qualifying to see the difference between a 1960s Dunlop R five Treaded Tire,
29:36
which is like maybe six inches wide and a tire that's got a slick no, no tread
29:42
or very, very, those very early slicks.
29:44
A bit of tread, a little tiny tread about 12 inches inches wide.
29:48
I mean, just right there.
29:50
You, you are looking at four or five seconds.
29:52
Yeah.
29:52
And then of course, would the car have stood that sort of the chassis when
29:56
the chassis started to flex badly?
29:59
Um, when you're starting to put the loads and those tires could generate through it.
30:02
If you added some sort of spoiler or wing to it.
30:05
So I don't know.
30:06
But the engine would've certainly been right on the top of the tree.
30:10
'cause the GT fortune when I was driving the GT 40 for golf in 1968, I mean,
30:14
they were giving about 385 horsepower.
30:17
With the what?
30:18
With the heads?
30:18
The um, Westlake?
30:20
Yeah.
30:20
With those heads.
30:21
They were giving about 385 horsepower.
30:23
Out of all the cars that you had the privilege of racing and
30:26
driving, what was your favorite car?
30:28
Well, I drove so many, it's hard to tell, but I think the GT 40
30:33
was a very special car in its day.
30:36
I mean, it was great long distance car.
30:38
The engine, by the time I got round to drive 68, were pretty reliable.
30:42
Had that beautiful ZF gearbox, which was terrific.
30:45
It, uh, was reasonably slippery.
30:47
It had very little down force, and it was really easy to drive and easy to set up.
30:52
Small adjustments of roll bars and bit of ride height and maybe a
30:56
camba, little bit of camba change would make a big difference.
31:00
Didn't get too hot inside, which was great for long distance racing.
31:03
Had good visibility and it had no vices.
31:06
It didn't have any severe push on certain corners or snap over
31:10
steer or anything like that, so it, it was a good car to drive.
31:12
The 9 62, you know, 10 years later was another incredible long distance car.
31:18
I mean, amazing, reliable as hell.
31:20
You run a whole thousand kilometer race, then you go to the next thousand
31:24
kilometer race and run all the practice sessions and on that same engine, then
31:28
you might put a fresh engine for the race.
31:29
You might not.
31:30
So that was a hell of a car.
31:32
Single seaters.
31:34
Probably one of the best cars I ever drove was M 16 at, uh, Indy in 1974.
31:39
The McLaren, that was a hell of a car, but in some ways the very best car I ever
31:44
drove was the last McLaren Canam, the M 20, which had been Peter Re's car in 1972.
31:53
Then McLaren pulled out because of the Porsche on saw and I drove
31:57
that car in Carly Black label colors for uh, Roy Woods in 1973.
32:02
And that was a hell of a, I can see why McLaren had won the championship
32:06
for like five years, six years in a row 'cause it was just slightest
32:10
touch to a flat change or ride height.
32:13
Major magic difference.
32:15
Had incredible traction.
32:16
One of our best races probably ever was in the, uh, cannon
32:19
race at Watkins Land in 1973.
32:22
I came second to Mark Donahue in the 9 17 30 against which we had absolutely
32:28
no hope 'cause it had about three, at least 300 awards about, and we did.
32:32
And I beat all the other nine seventeens.
32:34
The, with Brian Redmond and Jody Shechter, George Farmer, and a bunch
32:39
of other, no name has been, never was drivers, you know, like that.
32:43
People like Shechter know, obviously.
32:44
No good at all.
32:46
To me, that was one of my best ever races.
32:48
Uh, came second to, uh, Dar so to go back to drivers for a second, one of
32:53
the other folks that drove the white Ferrari that we've been talking about.
32:56
Oh, we're talking about a white Ferrari.
32:57
Are we, we were, we were, yeah.
32:59
Carry on.
33:01
So Roy Salvadori, did you have any interactions with him?
33:04
Can you tell us anything about him?
33:05
His personality, his driving?
33:07
Well, Roy was another driver who, who I couldn't believe I was racing against
33:11
'cause there'd been a name for my youth.
33:13
But of course Roy was really all those guys.
33:15
The only guy that really, really, really, really, really, really meant it was Stern.
33:19
All the others, I mean, Graham, Graham, Hilde, but Sterling
33:22
was the ultimate professional.
33:24
I mean, he was the first real professional driver.
33:27
I mean, he worked out, he didn't drink much.
33:30
He didn't have sex the night before the race, an more that was supposed
33:33
to do, but he thought he was so sterling was, was the man and,
33:39
uh, he was the man really to beat.
33:41
He, he was the guy that sort of would accept standard.
33:44
The Roy Sam was obviously incredibly good.
33:47
Winning Lamont with, uh, Carol Shelby, 1959.
33:50
I mean, I knew Roy.
33:52
I didn't know any of 'em very well, but he was always a bit of a hero of mine.
33:55
It was very quick.
33:56
So speaking of heroes, and I know this is a soft spot for John Summers, John being
34:01
a expert in the history of Mike Hawthorne, was Hawthorne an inspiration for you?
34:05
Was he a hero?
34:06
Did he inspire you to go into racing?
34:08
Well, unfortunately he didn't because he was up against Sterling.
34:12
Although he handed to Sterling, he gave Hawthorne.
34:16
His championship.
34:17
It hadn't been for Sterling.
34:18
Mos Hawthorne would never have won that championship because Hawthorne
34:21
spun in the Portuguese Grand Prix, which was in downtown Lisbon.
34:26
And to rejoin the track, he drove against the traffic and he was
34:32
disqualified and sterling ever.
34:34
The gent went to the stewards afterwards.
34:37
Of course, unlike the stewards today.
34:39
They listened to driver input.
34:40
Sterling said, I say chaps, that's a bit unkind.
34:44
You know, I mean, the chap had to go back 'cause he had spun the car.
34:47
So he, he had to, to rejoin the race.
34:50
He, he had to go against the traffic, you know, but not for long and
34:53
didn't hurt anybody without the way, so they reinstated Hawthorne who
34:58
won the championship by one point.
35:00
If you don't be for Sterling, you would never won it.
35:02
Sterling would've won it.
35:03
He's won and only championship.
35:04
But I liked Hawthorne and loved England, loved him.
35:07
He thought he was the best six to sliced bread because he was.
35:10
That English gen always wore his bows tie always down the pub having a drink.
35:15
But I recognized even then that Sterling just had that extra something.
35:20
Mike didn't, I mean, not to say that Mike wasn't a hell of a driver.
35:23
I mean, he was an incredible driver, but to me, Sterling was,
35:27
I mean, I was only like 14 or 15.
35:30
So Albert Sterling to me was the bee's needs.
35:33
David, you've said a, a couple of things about Lofty, sort of taking a personal
35:38
shine to you and you just applied there.
35:40
He sort of took a personal shine to Mike Hawthorn.
35:44
I mean, I always felt like Mike Hawthorn was quite a good.
35:46
Advertisement for Jaguar cars.
35:49
He was.
35:49
Do you think Lofty England was thinking like that or literally do you think it
35:53
was looking back on your relationship with Lofty England, do you think he
35:56
was just like, this is he's one of us.
35:58
I just like the guy personally.
36:00
I can work with him personally.
36:01
Do you think that's what it was, or?
36:03
I think he just had a lot of respect for Mike.
36:06
I do know he was a great fan of Mike, but I'm not quite sure about their
36:09
relationship other than I don't know how well he knew him In my case.
36:13
The only reason he liked me was.
36:18
I lived in a place called American House, which is halfway between
36:21
Leviton and Coventry, and I would come out the drive on my motorbike,
36:24
going to work as an apprentice.
36:26
A lofty would go swooping by an E type, so I would race him to
36:29
work going to, uh, Brown's Lane.
36:32
The only thing is when I got there, lofty would be standing arms at
36:35
Kimba and he'd look at his watch.
36:37
Ho, I'm supposed to be here at nine o'clock.
36:40
You are supposed to be here at eight.
36:45
But then when I drove the Jag, my dad's Jag, having rolled it at the
36:49
first race, I had it repaired by one of the guys in the body shop at Jag.
36:54
He repaired it at his house in dorm tree in the garden shed
36:57
at the bottom of his garden.
36:59
And he knocked out.
37:00
We had to get a new hood 'cause the hood had opened on the way home.
37:03
And uh, I was with my girlfriend Margaret, who's in the other room now painting.
37:08
So I repaired it.
37:09
Unfortunately, when Joe went to spray repainted, it was duck in blue.
37:14
By the time he got home from work, it was like a May evening, so it
37:17
was about seven o'clock by the time he got around to spraying it.
37:19
So it was a typical English May evening.
37:22
The humidity was high, so the car came out.
37:25
It was a mat car, Matt finish, which today of course is very groovy.
37:28
But this was a rough mat.
37:30
This wasn't as smooth, Matt.
37:31
This was, this was, and the hood was a real makeshift job.
37:35
Knocked up the hood out of sort of canvas or something.
37:37
So he always looked terrible, but as I say, he was often the clerk of the course.
37:42
He had saw me at one race, race for DB four and we swapped leads
37:46
pass, pass, REPA pass, rep pass, and eventually I won the race.
37:50
He was probably a 10 and a on the club circle at Silver,
37:52
the club circle as it was.
37:54
Lofty.
37:55
He thought I'd done a good job.
37:56
He said, what I like about you Holmes, is you, you race, you race well.
37:59
You race like you mean it.
38:01
And he said, I like that.
38:02
That's very commendable.
38:03
And from then on he, he followed my career.
38:05
So, uh, he became a bit of a fan.
38:07
So that's how uh, you lofty.
38:10
What was your bike?
38:11
So I can pick to you racing him to work.
38:15
When I was 16, my parents bought me a lamb better.
38:17
Scooter, me and Margaret used to drive around flat out on his scooter.
38:21
I go about 55 mile an hour.
38:23
So I swapped in the board of T Triumph speed twin, which
38:26
was before the swinging arm.
38:28
He'd only had a sprung hub, which had suspension without that much,
38:31
you know, bug roll suspension.
38:33
And uh, we used to drive around a couple of lunatics on that bike.
38:36
I love that bike.
38:37
It was driven so smooth, silky smooth, silky smooth by the
38:41
horizontal twin engine was terrific.
38:43
American police used to have those triumph speed twins and the triumph
38:47
tiger one hundreds in those days.
38:49
So, uh, that's what I like to ride.
38:51
I wouldn't wanna write it now, but,
38:55
well gentlemen, I think that's been an interesting look back into
38:59
early 1960s British motorsport.
39:02
I appreciate David joining us yet again to come on the show and talk to us.
39:07
I think we got what we need, right?
39:08
I think so.
39:09
Uh, nice to meet you.
39:09
That's fantastic.
39:11
Thank you very much, David.
39:12
Thank you for your time.
39:13
Thanks David.
39:13
I'm sure we'll meet again.
39:15
It's been a pleasure.
39:16
Thank you, David.
39:16
Alright, thank you Eric.
39:24
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