Three drivers dominated the international Formula 3 scene in 1 969-Sweden’s Reine Wisell and Ronnie Peterson, and Tim Schenken. The honors were fairly evenly distributed between them, and all three are certain to be moving on to higher things this year. Only time will tell which of these drivers is the better, but Reine Wisell is the eldest (at 28) and most experienced of this remarkable trio.
In Britain, where we have the whole spectrum of professional motor racing, it is difficult to imagine hero-worship of the type accorded to star footballers and pop singers being applied to a Formula 3 driver. However, in Sweden where motor racing is going through a tremendous upsurge in interest, F3 is the highest form of the sport. Reine and Ronnie Peterson have both been Swedish Champion and their fortunes are closely followed by the national press and television. Both need to make use of publicity organizations to deal with the volume of press and public relations, fan mail, etc. In Ronnie’s case this is handled by his sponsors; Reine is looked after by a company called Publicator who act as his agents and seek sponsorship for him as well as providing a publicity service. Although it is becoming increasingly common in motor sport, many Grand Prix drivers do not have this sort of public relations, which is not only personally profitable for the drivers concerned but increases awareness of the sport as a whole.
Reine Wisell is very ‘promotable’ material.
He is tall, blond and good looking, dresses well and is a bright and intelligent conversationalist. He gives the impression of being quite comfortably off, which he probably is, for his star status in Sweden alone brings in excellent appearance money, and he runs a smart Mercedes (now being replaced by a BMW 2800) fitted out with all sorts of things like cartridge stereo {which is fast becoming the hallmark of the successful young racing driver). And he is a bachelor, adding that he is ‘very happy about his free life’. Those who have seen his glamorous girl-friends can understand why.
Reine really established himself in 1967, when in his second year of single-seater racing he won eight home races and the Swedish Championship with his Brabham BT18, and put in some excellent showings around the Continent, including second places at Vila Real and Jarama. In the latter he was beaten by Clay Regazzoni driving the works Tecno and was so impressed by the car that he bought one for 1968. Peterson bought one too, and they had planned to run as a team, but this came to nothing as Ronnie wanted to do all the Swedish races whereas Reine was keen to expand his Continental experience. Reine was, without doubt, the most successful F3 driver of 1968, winning 11 major races, and at the end of the season was being tipped for Formula 2 in 1969. However, he signed for the Chevron factory team to drive the new B15 F3 and GT cars,
and although it was nearly all F3, Reine views 1969 as a good season. He collected six major overall wins, including four impressive victories on British soil, a 19-second lead (which is high by F3 standards) at Pau, and a dead-heat with Tim Schenken at Montlhery.
His wheel-to-wheel dices with Schenken were an exciting feature of F3 racing throughout the year, and often looked rather too close for comfort. But Reine says. They were safe really. We respect each other’s driving and know how our reactions will be’. On one occasion they even went through Hawthorn’s Bend at Brands Hatch side-by-side, though on reflection Reine thinks, ‘both of us were a little worried about that’. Three times, at Snetterton at Easter, Crystal Palace in August and Brands Hatch a month later, Reine managed to whip the Chevron past Tim’s Brabham in the closing seconds of the race, displaying shrewd race tactics. He maintains, however, that these things can’t be planned beforehand; it all has to be worked out in the heat of the battle.
With two seasons at the top of F3 behind him, Reine, like Tim and Ronnie, is looking to Formula 2 this year and although the make of car he will use has not being settled at the time of writing, there is a possibility that he might be teamed up with one of these arch rivals. Obviously, he now wants to get to the very top, although he expresses this more modestly by saying, ‘I’d like to see how
far I can compete with the best people in the world’.
This has not always been his burning ambition, for in his teens he was mad about motor-cycles and took part in motocross in the forests around his home town of Motala. There was a well-known driver around town and Reine and a friend decided to go and watch him race, with the result that they decided that they wanted to have a go themselves. At the time Reine owned a Triumph Herald, but this invariably broke down before he got to the circuit. In due course it was replaced by a Mini-Cooper, then a series of cars, including Minis, an FJ-engine Anglia and a hot MG Midget, before he returned to a 1293 Mini-Cooper ‘S’ and finished second in the 1966 Swedish ice-racing championship.
It has been suggested that ice-racing is one of the reasons that Scandinavia is producing some excellent racing drivers these days, but Reine thinks not. He feels that it is closer to rallying. The long-spiked tires used mean that it’s either all grip or the car turns over, and he dismisses it all by saying it was ‘just fun-but too cold’. He and his friends did however make their own circuits on frozen lakes with a tractor and drove their cars, without studded tires, around them as fast as they could, and this, Reine thinks, taught him a lot.
It was during 1966 that Reine decided to buy a single-seater and concentrate on
proper circuit racing. He bought an F3 Cooper and his performances progressively improved until, near the end of the season, he beat champion Picko Troberg’s Brabham, which he then bought for 1967; ‘I had to beat him to get the price down’, he says. By then Reine was a professional driver. Previously he had worked on a top-secret submarine engine (‘somebody sold it to the Russians, but I learnt about brake testing’) and then was in partnership in a motor workshop; this is today a thriving business run by his friend Ulf Karlssom.
In the seasons since he has raced at most of the major circuits of Europe. He has no particular favorites, though he likes ’round the houses’ circuits (‘But they are’, he says, ‘a little bit dangerous’). Like most drivers he confesses he has little liking for slipstreaming, but of course he has learnt a lot about it. ‘I’ve tried many times to go wide, break away from the bunch, but it’s not possible to win this way. But this is not the sort of racing I like-you can’t do anything yourself. You look in the mirror and there’s a long, long train’, he says. He has not only learnt about slipstreaming. With the Tecno he was invariably sideways but last year with the Chevron his driving was noticeably smoother. The hairiness can be partly attributed to the 1968 Tecno’s poor brakes, but Reine also says that now, ‘I haven’t need to be that hairy. When you get experience, you don’t need to push the limits so far. Now I prefer to take it steadier’.
Experience has also come from driving different types of car. He didn’t have many drives with the Chevron GT, though he did gain a good class win with John Hine in the BOAC 500. His last drive with that car was in the Nurburgring 1000 kms, where an unexpected patch of wet road put him into the ditch. In fact, he hadn’t been entered in that race and was originally there just to watch, when Rico Steinemann offered him a ride in the Porsche 917. He declined, as he puts it: ‘Just to start in the 917 wasn’t that good fun. I don’t like to kill myself. A few weeks later, though, he was at the wheel of the 7-liter Scuderia Filipinetti Corvette at Le Mans, which, with power steering, power brakes and 185 mph on the straight was ‘good fun’, even if they did have all sorts of troubles. More recently he went to Kyalami to co-drive Jo Bonnier’s Lola T70, but. did not race as the car was crashed in the early stages. The most valuable experience of all, however, came in December when he was invited to try a works McLaren M7A F1 car at Goodwood. He sums that up, almost speechless with enthusiasm, as ‘just fantastic’.
Filipinetti have asked Reine and Ronnie Peterson to share a Ferrari 512S in the 1970 endurance races. Whether or not this can be fitted in with their other commitments is not yet clear. What is clear is that this year is going to be a very busy one for Wisell. So, before it starts, he has gone off to find some sun in the Canary Islands and hopes in future to be based there in Winter months, with a Summer home in Majorca. Tax problems, even more acute than in Britain, make his living in Sweden unfavorable, and either way, Reine says, with his ever-sharpening English wit, ‘I’m much better off in the sun’.
Motor Racing 1970 V17 N01 January – P13 Reine Wisell Article
