Al Pease

Victor “Al” Pease (15 October 1921 – 4 May 2014) was a British-Canadian motor racing driver, born in Darlington, England. Growing up in England, he joined the British Army as a young man, serving in India, Rhodesia and Egypt. After his service, he emigrated to the United States, then Canada, in the 1960s; after a brief career as an illustrator, he took up motorsports. Info from Wiki

Bio by Stephen Latham
Al Pease was originally born in England and, after serving as a Royal Air Force pilot during the Second World War, moved to Toronto, where he worked as a commercial artist/illustrator for four decades.

He kept winning national racing events for 30 years and was legendary in Canadian motorsport throughout the 1950s and 1960s, in local sports car and in the ’60s single seater races, winning almost every regional and major class title in Canada. He became known for driving British Motor Corporation cars, winning the Sundown Grand Prix of Endurance at Mosport in 1964, with co-driver Don Kindree in an Austin-Healey 3000 plus won an hour-long race in an Austin Cooper as well as a production race in an MGB.
He drove John Manyon’s Formula A Lola T140 in the Canadian Road Racing Championship and was third on his debut at Mosport though at Harewood Acres he and another driver were fighting for second place when they touched and Al crashed heavily. He also raced an Austin Healey Sprite in the Sebring 12 Hours in 1964, though retired due to rear axle failure, but finished the 1965 race, in an MGB, before going on to drive a Castrol Canada sponsored Lotus 47.

Away from the track, he successfully lobbied the Canadian Automobile Sports Club to allow sponsors’ names to be painted on race cars.
He bought the original F1 Eagle, complete with Climax engine, and with Castrol sponsorship entered the 1967 Canadian GP at Mosport Park. However, he lost six laps when his engine wouldn’t start up on the grid and his mechanics had to change the battery. Once he got going, he spun on a part of the track furthest away from the pits, and the engine wouldn’t restart, with the battery again being flat. Instead of quitting, he ran back to the pits, a run that was mainly uphill, plus it was still raining, to get another battery, then ran the distance back to his car and installed the battery!

Castrol entered him into the Canadian GP at Mont Tremblant a year later, with the same car and engine, but he didn’t start the race after the engine crank gave up. In order to find out. what caused the problem, Al single-handedly stripped the engine down and found there was an Allen key jamming it.

Two years later, he returned to F1, at Mosport, again driving the same car, but it was now three years old and had also been on display for several months at an exhibition in Montreal.
As a side note to this, the car was later sold to Tom Wheatcroft and put on display at the Donington Grand Prix Collection in the UK, where it was restored to the original Dan Gurney colour scheme.

Following this, he continued to race, in Formula 5000 and Formula A, before continuing to race vintage cars until 1988.
He was named Canada’s driver of the year in 1964 and was inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame in 1998. On his induction, the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame noted “it is doubtful any other driver in the history of Canadian motorsport has collected more trophies than Al Pease, winning a steady stream of regional and national championships in a variety of cars for almost 30 years.”

Al retired in 1988 and enjoyed tinkering with old cars until he sadly passed away in Tennessee in 2014.

Before Formula One

Formula One is a very different kettle of fish these days compared to what it used to be like. Nowadays, it’s a mega-professional, highly-organised sport (business?) with massive media coverage, where even backmarkers can be household names in their own countries. Gone are the days of one-off local entrants and weekend hacks, which is a shame, because many of them have provided some of the most interesting stories in Grand Prix history. Take Al Pease, for example. A Canadian from Darlington in England, on paper his Grand Prix career seemed more than pathetic, to the point some have dubbed him the ‘worst ever’ F1 driver. But they do not know the whole story: to the Canadian motorsport fraternity Pease is nothing short of a living legend, inducted as an Honorary Member of the ‘Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame’ in 1998.

The CMHF say that “It is doubtful that any other driver in the history of Canadian motorsport has collected more trophies than Al Pease, winning a steady stream of regional and national championships in a variety of cars for almost 30 years”. In the 1950s, having moved to Canada after WWII, Pease began doing club races in a small sports car, which Richard Jenkins informs us was a Riley. He then joined rivals the British Motor Corporation in the late 1950s, and raced for them well into the 1960s in local sports car competitions, driving MGs and Minis in particular. He won stacks of national, regional and class championships in the process, but what specific results we do have belie the spectacular success he achieved. Testament to this, he was voted ‘Driver of the Year’ in 1964, by the Canadian Racing Drivers’ Association. In the 1964 Bridgehampton 500km race he was the only MG runner, but he retired. In the 1965 Sebring 12hrs, sharing an MG DRX 256C with American Brad Pickard, he came home an uninspiring 32nd overall.

Throughout the 1960s, Pease also raced in single-seaters, for example a Lotus 23, a car which was notable for having the name ‘Honest Ed’ emblazoned down its side. A moderately successful result was 8th in the non-championship 1963 Canadian GP. Later in the decade, from 1967-9, he took part in three L&M; Championship SCCA Formula A races, so Allen Brown says. In 1967 at St. Jovite he crashed out, while he failed to start at Thompson in 1968, and retired at the Mosport event the same year. But in terms of his sports car exploits, despite parting company with BMC, he continued to race successfully, forming a new association with Castrol, the lubricant maker. In 1967 he campaigned the Castrol-Lotus 47, and one of his wins that year was in the first support race for the USAC Telegram Trophy event. But it was shortly before the 1967 World Championship Canadian GP at Mosport, that Al Pease’s story got really interesting!

Formula One

At this stage, Pease was no spring chicken. He was just a month and a half shy of turning 46, but Castrol had no qualms about entering him into the Canadian GP at a track he had helped to design, Mosport. He was to drive an Eagle T1G (car 11) with a 2.8 litre Climax L4 engine that they had managed to procure. In this uncompetitive machine, out of 19 entrants Pease was 16th quickest in practice, but would end up being bumped up to 15th on the grid when Jo Siffert did not start in his Cooper. Pease’s time of 1:30.1 was 7.7 seconds behind Jim Clark’s Lotus on pole. He was surprisingly faster than both Eppie Wietzes and Mike Fisher, both driving Lotuses, but he was admittedly 2.8 seconds slower than Jo Bonnier in 14th. 18th quickest would be the once-obscure Tom Jones (not the Welsh crooner!) with a time of 1:51.9, and he was not allowed to start. Gotta love some of these private entrants!

Now, the records alone make Pease look utterly atrocious. In horrendously wet conditions, Sir Jack Brabham won the 90-lap race. Pease crossed the finish line 10 seconds after Sir Jack – but a whole 43 laps down!! He had completed 47 laps at an average speed of 69.4 km/h. Naturally, Al was not classified. While Clark and Jackie Stewart had both retired, they were still ahead of Pease, and even Wietzes had completed 69 laps come race’s end. In fact there was a bizarre chain of events to explain this appalling showing, and it started when he was delayed for 6 laps at the beginning when his Eagle would not start on the dummy grid and his mechanics had to change the battery. Of course, this was not his own doing, and it would not be his only battery problem that day!

He finally came onto the track, but several laps in, at the part of the track furthest from the pits he spun in the admittedly very wet conditions. His Climax engine was so waterlogged the car would not start – the battery was flat. Not once contemplating simply retiring, Pease decided to run the length of the track in the teeming rain, back to the pits to get another battery – and then run back and install it, all by himself. So in the end he was 43 laps behind, almost half the race in arrears. Amazing. A year later, Castrol entered him again, in the same car/engine combination (car 25 this time), at the Canadian GP at the Mont-Tremblant track at St Jovite. Jochen Rindt was on pole in the Brabham with a time of 1:33.8, while Pease was dead last out of 22 on 1:49.6, a whole 15.8 seconds off, despite having done well at this track in sports cars. He was even 8.4 seconds slower than the next car, Bill Brack’s Lotus.

True to form though, there is a story behind this too. Apparently, Tom Prankerd tells us, trying to discover a problem with his engine, Pease single-handedly stripped his Climax V8 only to find an Allen key or some such jammed in the thing!! What’s more, he and the team were unable to put it all back together again in time for qualifying, and Pease was forced to sit out the race, eventually won by defending World Champion Denny Hulme. For a part of 1969, Pease’s lost his trusty Eagle into Castrol’s hands, and so he raced a Lola T140 with a Chevrolet engine, entered by John Maryon in the Gulf Canada Series, a nine-race championship for Formula A and F5000 cars. In the first race of the series at Mosport he came 3rd, but after that mechanical problems kept him on the sidelines. It was only at Harewood, the 7th race of the series, that he returned, colliding with Horst Kroll and then crashing out of the race altogether.

Meanwhile, Castrol had put his Eagle on display at the chauvinistically titled ‘Man and His World’ exhibition in Montreal (they’d never name an exhibition like that these days!). But a month later, when it was time for the World Championship round at Mosport once again, Pease, almost 48, dusted off the car (which had now been sitting in a room for quite some time) and was entered by Maryon for the race. Jacky Ickx was on pole for Brabham with a 1:17.4. Pease was 17th out of 20, 11.1 seconds behind. But Pete Lovely, who was 16th, was a whole 5.6 seconds ahead of him! Having said that, Pease was faster than Brack, John Cordts and Silvio Moser, the latter recording a time of 1:41.4.

This is the captivating part, though. The Mosport officials this time disqualified him after he had done just 22 laps (a lot less than half what the leader had done). The amazing thing is that, as Richard Jenkins correctly tells us, before he was pulled out of the race he had already managed to shove Moser off the track! Indeed, Tom Prankerd has informed us there was more to the story. Wrestling a car that was well past its use-by date, it was Pease’s slow entry into one of Mosport’s sweeping curves that caused Moser to swerve, and clout the armco. Afterwards, despite his best efforts, Pease became something of a moving chicane, and seemed to be not very courteous to drivers behind him when being lapped, which was happening quite a bit! Legend has it Al appeared to be having a good scrap with anyone who came up to pass him, regardless of how many laps ahead they were.

Admittedly, the dog of a car at his disposal doubtless contributed to it, but things began to come to a head when a rather savage chop on the Canadian’s part damaged the suspension of the under-rated Jean Pierre Beltoise, and then his purported repertoire of blocks and unorthodox lines destroyed a superb five car battle for third place. When another swipe almost eliminated Stewart, Ken Tyrrell had seen enough. The Matra boss lodged a protest with the organisers, who immediately black-flagged Pease for being too slow. We certainly can’t think of any other time where this has happened. And thus ended a surreal chapter in an otherwise overly-successful career!

After Formula One

Pease was nearly 50 by this stage (although age need not be a barrier: Juan Fangio retired in his late-40s while Luigi Fagioli actually won a race at 51). But in 1970 he continued racing Formula 5000 and Formula A cars, winning the last ever race at Harewood in a Brabham BT21. He also raced a Brabham BT23b with a Climax L4 engine. He eventually quit when it all became too expensive. Throughout his career, Pease was an influential player in Canadian motorsport. He was instrumental in getting the Canadian motorsport governing body, the CASC, to allow sponsors’ names to appear on the side of cars, thereby taking the sport in Canada to a whole new professional level. Since then, though, his main participation in motorsport has been in Canadian vintage car racing, in which he dabbled from 1983 to 1988.

Once the owner of an art advertising studio, Al has otherwise slipped into retirement, and currently lives in Sevierville, Tennessee, USA. There he indulges in the odd spot of car restoration, loves eating seafood and relaxes sipping a vokda and orange juice!

CAREER SUMMARY

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