Timothy “Tim” Theodore Schenken (born 26 September 1943) is a former racing driver from Sydney, Australia.
He participated in 36 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on 16 August 1970. He achieved one career podium at the 1971 Austrian Grand Prix, and scored a total of seven championship points. He did however have two non-championship race podiums – he finished third in the 1971 BRDC International Trophy and third in the 1972 International Gold Cup. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Born in 1943 in Gordon, Sydney, Australia, when he was old enough to drive legally he would borrow his mother’s Simca Aronde, telling her he was going to meet with friends but then go to a club rally. On one occasion at Calder though, despite not having a competition licence, he sneaked in to a queue of cars lining up to go out for practice. Nobody checked on him and after driving round, to his amazement they had given him a grid position for the race. He competed in it and won a trophy, which he then hid in the roof of their garage. Years later, while he was racing in the UK,when his parents were selling their house he got his brother to retrieve the trophy!
Once he obtained his race licence he bought a race-prepared Austin A30, followed by a Lotus 18, plus also did hillclimbs in a friend’s JAP-powered special and went on to win the Australian Hillclimb Championship. In 1965 he decided to head for Britain and he and a friend scraped together the fares for a (long) boat journey to Southampton, via Papua New Guinea, Port Said, Suez, Athens and Naples. Arriving in England, he went to the Autosport magazine offices and introduced himself to the assistant editor, Paddy McNally, and persuaded him to put an article in saying that “the Australian Hillclimb Champion had arrived in the UK and was open to offers. I waited for the phone to ring, but it must have been a slow week…”
They eventually found work as mechanics at the Chequered Flag in Chiswick and after a damaged twin-cam Anglia race car was brought in he rebuilt it in his spare time (the boss providing the parts) and used it to learn the English circuits. Then came a Lotus 22 in F3, transporting it to races in an old laundry van, with a plywood box on the back where the nose stuck out. Following this came Formula Ford with a loaned Merlyn chassis and his domination saw him offered an F3 seat by Rodney Bloor, who ran a Chevron as Sports Motors. Despite a hectic season he took 36 victories and won the British FFord Championship, the British Lombank F3 Championship, the ER Hall F3 Trophy plus received the Grovewood Award. As an example of the hectic schedule, he could find himself in four races at an event on a Saturday ( two FFord and two F3) but then having to dash across country to race somewhere else in another four races on the Sunday.
In the following year he won the French Craven A F3 Championship and the Greater London F3 Trophy. His Brabham BT28 was painted red and black due to sponsorship from Guards cigarettes and they would travel round Europe with a Ford Zephyr “with the back seat and rear bulkhead removed, four wheels and a nosecone in the back, spare engine and gear ratios in the boot and towing an open trailer with the car on it” His mechanic would be cowering in the passenger seat, as they always towed at 90mph! It was a vintage year in F3 racing, with battles between Tim’s Brabham, Ronnie Peterson (Tecno), Reine Wisell (Chevron), Emerson Fittipaldi (Lotus) and Howden Ganley (Chevron). He took wins at Barcelona, Albi, Oulton, Park, Jarama, Silverstone, Cadwell Park and Crystal Palace plus also did the Marathon de la Route; “that 84-hour thrash round the Nürburgring, in a Cologne Ford Capri with Jean-François Piot and Dieter Glemser. A great way to learn the ’Ring, but an utterly mad event. No pitstop could last more than one minute, otherwise you racked up penalties, but the driver could stop out on the track and work on the car himself – except if any one lap took more than 24 minutes in total, you were disqualified. As the cars got more and more worn out, people were leaving the pits with their overalls bulging with brake pads, spanners and bits of wire.”
During that time he also raced at the Monza and Spa 1000Kms races, with John Raeburn in a Ford GT40. However at Spa the ride height was wrong, and “through the fast bits you could turn the wheel and nothing happened, like being in a speedboat. It frightened the life out of me. Then for the race it rained. Real Spa rain. We only had slicks, we couldn’t afford wets. John started, and at the end of lap one Jacky Ickx arrived in a plume of spray, down the hill, up Eau Rouge and out of sight before anybody else appeared. Then everybody else came through, and after a pause John came gingerly round La Source on his slicks. We hung the board out for him, he gave us a little wave- and spun, clouted the bridge parapet, put it in the ditch. I’ve never been so relieved in all my life.”
1970 saw his F1 debut with Frank Williams, at the Austrian GP and his second race came at Monza but Jochen Rindt was killed during practice and they were friends, having raced together in F2, and Tim said how Jochen was a huge hero of his and it left him feeling confused and all alone. In the following season he raced alongside Graham Hill at Brabham and finished on the podium in Austria, had a sixth place finish at the Nürburgring and in non-championship races he was fourth in the Race of Champions, fifth in the Questor GP at Ontario and third in the Daily Express International Trophy at Silverstone. At the same time he was competing in F2 for Ron Dennis’s Rondel Racing and finished fourth in the series. Speaking of Ron Dennis, he stated that even at that stage it was all about presentation; “not only were the cars immaculate: the transporter was immaculate too. Ron had two nicknames: Team Briefcase, because he always carried a briefcase, and Team Dream, because he had a dream. He wasn’t going to be just a mechanic, or just have a little F2 outfit. He’d set his sights high, even then.”
1972 saw him finish third in the Brazilian F2 International Tournament while in F1 he was racing for Surtees, with his best results being fifth in Argentina, eighth in Spain and seventh in Canada. After being approached by Ferrari to race sports cars, he won the Buenos Aires 1000 km and Nurburgring 1000 km races (with Ronnie Peterson), was second in the Daytona 6 Hour, Sebring 12 Hour, Brands Hatch 1000 km and Watkins Glen 6 Hour plus finished third at the Monza 1000 km and Zeltweg 1000 km races (at Zwltweg he hit a hare, which punctured a tyre. While negotiating the drive with Enzo Ferrari, he asked for £2000 a race and it was agreed; “£18,000 was a lot of money then. Howden Ganley and I had just bought a house to share in Maidenhead, and it cost us £7500.”
There were several incidents during his time with Ferrari, one time nearly hitting a plane at Sebring; “One third of the width of the main runway was the circuit, two-thirds was an active airstrip. Coming onto the runway a rear brake hose burst, and I slid under the wing of an aircraft revving up for take-off. The night before Daytona, Ronnie Peterson suggested a drive on the beach so they set off and with Tim driving, “we go down the ramp onto the beach in our hire car doing about 70mph, right in front of a police car. They nab us, we haven’t got any ID, so it’s back to the police station and into the cells with the drunks. I suggest they hold me and let Mr Peterson go back to our hotel for our passports. Eventually they agree to that. So Ronnie, being Ronnie, gets into the hire car and rockets off down the road, wheels spinning. They set off after him, can’t catch him, and have to radio ahead and set up a road block to stop him. Half an hour later they bring him back looking very sheepish. Now it’s 2am. So we call Peter Schetty, he gets Bill France out of bed, Big Bill talks to the cops and they let us go, and we’re on the grid bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the 10am start.”
There was a one off race with a Frank Williams Iso Marlboro in 1973 in Canada and during the year he raced a Ferrari 312PB with Carlos Reutemann at Le Mans.
In 1974 he raced the Trojan F1 car, though it would be a disappointing period and he ended the year with a one-off drive with Lotus at the US GP. The following year saw him finish third in Interserie (with a Porsche 917) and second in the British GT Championship in a Porsche 911 RSR. In 1976 he was third in the British GT Series, fifth in the Deutsche Rennensport Meisterschaft in a Porsche 934 and finished second in the GT Class at Le Mans. At that year’s Monza Six Hours the Loos team had entered two Porsche 934s, but as only three drivers turned up, he shared one car with Toine Hezemans and the other with Klaus Ludwig, and finished first and second in the race! Following the race he rushed back to the UK, luckily in time to for the birth of his son. As he said “That was a good day.”
Continuing with sports and touring cars, he raced for the Broadspeed Jaguar team in 1977’s European Touring Car Championship and during this time he and Howden Ganley formed the Tiga car company. Tim eventually left but the company would go on to produce around 400 cars over the years, ranging from Formula Ford, Formula Atlantic, CanAm and Group C.
He also worked as a team owner and a manager in various different categories, including running John Fitzpatrick’s IMSA race team in America. In 1984 he returned to Australia and became the director of racing operations with the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport Ltd. He would go on to take numerous roles, including Race Director of the V8 Super Car series, Clerk of the Course of the Surfers Paradise Champ Car event, Clerk of the Course for the Australian Grand Prix (having done this role for every GP since 1985) plus later became one of the permanent stewards for Formula E.
In 2016, Tim was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia and then inducted into the Australian Motor Sport Hall of Fame in 2018.
