Aleš Norský: Basil van Rooyen’s motor racing career stretched from the late 1950s until 1980, and reached from motorcycles to touring and sports cars, all the way to Formula 1, where he started in two World Championship events, and was multiple race winner in the South African Championship. He has won a number of other races and three Championships. Along the way, van Rooyen had also displayed remarkable engineering abilities, which led him to form the renowned car performance and accessory company, Superformance. After his retirement from racing, van Rooyen has managed several large companies, and this work eventually resulted in relocating his family from South Africa to Australia, where he still lives today. For the past dozen years (or so) Basil channels his energies to innovation and creative engineering. We had this following e-mail discussion in January 2017.
A.N. You started to race motorcycles and then switched to saloon cars, but was it always your ambition to race, or did it just happen, somehow?
B.vR. My folks never saw a motor race…nor did I…but I wanted a motorcycle to impress the girls that my hormones had discovered, and to get around at 17. By 18 I upgraded to a Puch 250 from my James 200, and heard about a race coming up…and entered my road machine. This led to my being chosen to ride one of three works Puch’s from Austria, in the upcoming 24-hour race near Johannesburg, and my realisation that I could ride. I rode the winning bike, but fell ill with kidney bruising from lying flat on my stomach with legs outstretched to slip-stream larger machines, and having no kidney belt. But the bug had bitten, and it led to me buying an Anglia 1000cc and modifying it for touring car racing.
I think it was Eoin Young who said that the first Formula 1 race Chris Amon ever saw, was also the first one he drove in. I believe it was very much the case for you as well?
No. I had watched a few F1 events and GP’s in South Africa, as my touring car participation became national with sponsorship, but had no ambitions as my forte became engineering of touring car engines and suspension. Unexpectedly, as a national touring car champion, I was invited by local F1 star John Love to drive his Cooper Climax 2.7 (which he discarded for a Brabham Repco) in the 1968 SAGP…just two weeks away! I had no experience in such a car and the Formula 1 drivers objected when they learnt I had only done a few laps in a single seater. The clerk of the course got them to agree to my practising, and racing on the proviso there were no complaints. I qualified in a creditable 20th in a respectable lap time, and sadly blew a head-gasket while advancing in the race. It was enough to be noticed and offered a more competitive car by a sponsor, Jack Brabham’s BT 24 Repco. John Love then replaced his Brabham Repco with the Cosworth powered Lotus 49. My first half season saw me take a few close 2nd places to Love, and winning my first two F1 races when his car had niggles.
Once you got a taste of open wheel single seaters, there was no coming back and you began to compete in the South African F1 Championship full time. Someone told me once that the crucial advantage in that series was the ability of the (for the lack of better word) privileged few to obtain sufficient supply of tyres and spare parts during the entire season, while the others had to make the best of what was available to them. Would you agree?
Tyres were from the company with whom you were contracted…GoodYear, Firestone or Dunlop those days…if you were good enough. The annual budget we had to run the season on would make the works drivers laugh. I would need a chapter to cover the things we did to make the engines durable, whereas the works teams just changed them as necessary.
East London and Kyalami are, of course, well known due to hosting World Championship Grands Prix. The South African F1 raced on many other tracks though, with names like Roy Hesketh, Kumalo, Midrand, Killarney, Westmead, even Lourenço Marques. How did they compare to Kyalami, which around 1970 was one of the premier global circuits?
They were all exciting tracks for us to arrive at and tackle. Not as safe as today, often with trees or other obstacles should one go off…though we never gave that a thought.
Neville Lederle finished 6th in his only World Championship race and did win the South African Championship, but decided to retire early and perhaps we did not get the chance to see the best of him. John Love famously almost won the 1967 Grand Prix, but that was apparently a one-off. The two drivers from South Africa who did achieve international success were Tony Maggs and of course Jody Scheckter, but both of them chose to go to Europe at an early stage. So how good were the local veterans like Syd van der Vyver, Dough Serrurier, Ernest Pieterse, Jackie Pretorius, Dave Charlton, Sam Tingle, Ian Scheckter, and others?
Hmmmm…quite a question. I think almost all of those you list, in the right car on the right day, could win a Grand Prix, and had their stars really align not just in the South African series. Then there were others, like Trevor Blokdyk and
Brausch Niemann, who impressed me with inferior machinery. Amongst those drivers that become competitive or Champions in their homelands, it can be difficult to judge their potential from those established in the major teams, as you would know. This difficulty is exacerbated by the disparity in machinery and technical crew at their disposal. Think of the talented F1 drivers who came second but never won a GP. So whilst talent and super skill is a given, there is also much luck involved. Think of Stirling Moss never winning the world Championship…a lack of skill or luck? World golfing champion of the sixties, South African Gary Player famously said: “The harder I practice, the luckier I get”. But I believe that luck plays a big part.
Is it true that Pieter de Klerk became race driver because he could find nobody else to drive his deKlerk-Alfa ‘contraption’?
Ha-ha…don’t know. What a gentleman.
Your own performances behind the wheel were noticed by none other than Ken Tyrrell and Jackie Stewart. You even contemplated a move to Europe and tangible possibility to become Stewart’s teammate in the World Championship. But severe testing accident put an abrupt end to those plans. How do you remember that period?
The most exciting ever. Flights were already booked for me to leave South Africa for Tyrrell’s shop, just weeks after my tyre-testing session. I had an accident at Kyalami at top speed down its fast straight. The car had no rear wing as these were banned for the Grand Prix season immediately after my 2nd World Championship race in 1969. See pic here for what was left of the McLaren, from which I was thrown 90 meters.
Most drivers from that era say that the dangers of racing was just something everybody was aware of, but nobody was prepared to admit that it could happen to them. Did you also see it that way?
Yes. It was quite naïve somehow, and we used to think how much safer we were than those who drove in the eras before us. They had no belts or crash helmets or disc brakes or Armco barriers!
Was such point of view necessary to even be able to go racing in the first place?
I think once it bites, the passion and the ego to prove one’s worth overwhelm common sense…though Jackie Stewart was ahead of his time on this subject.
After you recovered, you did some more races in the South African series, which by then was ever more open to F5000 cars. Did you ever consider taking part in the Tasman Cup, which took similar path with its own rulebook? You did, after all, race in Australia driving touring cars.
I never had clear aims or dreams, but followed whatever path fortune provided. That seemed to offer more potential to increase my engineering and driving activities, which had become my profession. I was invited to drive in two touring car races in Australia by Peter Brock, in the Sandown 500 in Melbourne and then the famous Bathurst mountain circuit near Sydney. Had I been invited to any Tasman Series race, I certainly would have tried to fit that in.
Australia had ultimately become your home. Was it a deliberate choice or did your racing career and your work just take you there?
I sold off of my Superformance business when the oil crisis of 1971 caused motorsport to be shortly banned in South Africa ‘till further notice. Then I was head-hunted into running a leading South African packaging business Kaycraft PL, which worked for Revlon and Estée Lauder cosmetics, jewelry Industry, also pens and watches, medallions etc… This led me to overseas business trips, and an Australian packaging company CEO gave me an offer to set up similar factory in Sydney, which I could not refuse. My emigration with family to Australia had no connection whatever with my visit here ten year earlier to motor-race.
What do you consider to be your most satisfying era behind the wheel of a race car?
After recovering from my accident, Paddy Driver and many other leading South African drivers, like Bobby Olthoff and John McNicol, were running the new F5000’s in South African’s national championship. These had aluminum heads, monocoque chassis, 5L engines with fuel injection. He asked me why I was not back in the series. I said that after my shunt, I was not sure if I could still be competitive. He then kindly offered me his old Lola F5000, a tubular chassis with 4.7L iron Ford V8 engine with carburetors, to use at the following championship event at Roy Hesketh. It was just lying idle at his farm. I was soon back in the groove when I beat all those in their newer F5000’s, behind only the two leading current Formula 1 cars of John Love and Dave Charlton. I then got sponsorship to buy a new March F1, and went to the Dutch GP to hand over a cheque for the car to Robin Herd (the H in March). On the way I went via Japan on business, and in the hotel read the news of my great friend Bruce McLaren being killed at Goodwood. Days later, sitting on the pit roof with Sally Courage and Helen Stewart watching the Grand Prix, Piers Courage was killed. Being 31 already, I decided to stick to touring cars. Robin Heard congratulated me when I asked him for the cheque back.
Do you follow Formula 1 or any other racing series still today?
Formula 1 I follow avidly…with withdrawal symptoms in the off-season. Moto GP too. My dream is that they will ban all aero devices in F1, which takes half their budget for testing and adds so much bulk to the spares being airfreighted around the world…and then a nudge at the first corner means a pit-stop for new nose or retirement. This change would also demand more driver input and the four-wheel drifts we used to drool over. And cars would look sleek again, like the one in this picture.
Your adopted country also happens to be a place where Formula 5000 is being resurrected as FT5000. Do you have any interest in that at all, and do you think it can succeed or even reach the popularity of the old Tasman Cup?
This is a difficult time for motorsport. With emissions and smog issues coming ever more in the public eye, will the big Australian Super V8 series be relevant for long? I love F5000 and hope it can be revived. But Australia, like South Africa, has always been a mecca for touring car fans ahead of those for single seaters.
Your racing career lasted for over two decades, but I understand that your other passion has always been engineering. Your company recorded patents ranging from swimming pool cleaning equipment to brand new concept for a two-stroke engine. How is all that going, and what do you plan next?
I have patented some interesting inventions in my time even before ‘retirement’. A bicycle with long cranks from the rear axle. A tennis racquet with a concave surfaces on both sides due to the stringing, a device which stops the engine when the throttle sticks under braking. The ones that did not run into legal issues (and were commercial successes) were the ‘Pool Twister’ cleaning device that stops pool cleaners getting stuck, and the HeeBeeGeeBee head massager, which was gift of the year. And now my CITS engine, for which I am busy seeking an investor to fund the final stage…it is all on www.citsengine.com.au.
Being an inventor and an engineer, what is your view of the current Formula 1 hybrid engines, or power units as they are being called now. It is, in a way, an old technology that has been used in production cars years before Formula 1 caught up. Although, admittedly, it has been taken to another level of development there.
The noise from these engines is disappointing but not critical I think. And the harvesting of energy from braking does bring it into the new century at least. I can only reiterate my comments above on aero devices!
And your opinion on Formula E…is that the real future of racing?
This will add pressure on the relevance of motorsport as we know it…especially because of the silence. I do think that autonomous racing, maybe two or three decades from now, will become immensely relevant. The software engineers now so important in modern warfare, will be equally challenged to have a race car driven autonomously, inches apart at high speeds and braking at the last minute, taking the best line, avoiding others there already…unimaginable!!! I can see international patriotic rivalry here as vigorous as seen in any other form.
How about hydrogen-cell power units in F1? I guess most people would definitely not like the sound of those, but wouldn’t it be the true groundbreaking development of our times?
Hard to say. Same comment as for the E series??
Prost or Senna?
Prost!
Finally, did I forget to ask anything?
Whew…let me get over this lot. Congrats for finding many probing questions to someone, who sadly only drove in two Championship Grands Prix and scored DNF in both.
