David Holland: It’s good to be reminded of the less selfish and ruthless side of motor racing and you soon see that when spending time with one of the nice guys of motorsport. Tim Parnell once said about John Campbell-Jones (or Shamble-Jones as he nicknamed him through his habit of forgetting important items of kit at race meetings) that he didn’t have a nasty bone in his body…and it’s easy to see why. Although John did not reach the same level of success as some other drivers, he was on friendly terms with most of the greats of his era. In fact Mike Hawthorn was due to attend his 29th birthday party on the day of that dreadful accident on the Hog’s Back in January 1959. John was a bit of a late starter when it came to racing and his interest was sparked by the first British GP after the war at Silverstone. In 2007 I had the opportunity to chat with him about those times more than half-century ago.
J.C-J. I was taken to the meeting by my sister in an open vintage Bentley with her boyfriend; she had to have a chaperon in those days. We were at Club corner and the first lap they came round I thought, “God, this I must do”. I’d never seen anything like it, fantastic. From that moment that’s all I really wanted to do. My parents were very anti, because of the dangers. I was working with my uncle’s electrical business and one nice spring morning I thought, “What the hell was I doing here”. I took a day off and went down to see John Cooper at Surbiton and asked him for a job. He put me to work stripping down a 500 chassis, so I started working as a mechanic at Coopers. I was about 25 and had done a bit of garage mechanic work with Jaguars. I had a year with Jack Brabham and Roy Salvadori, the two works drivers. Come the winter I got a bit fed up with chassis brackets and things. I thought I’d see how the other half lived up at Lotus and saw Colin Chapman at Hornsey. The little lock up is still there, which is where we had the engine and gearbox shop. He offered me a job and introduced me to Graham Hill, who was then working on engines and gearboxes and his assistant as it turns out was a guy called Keith Duckworth. Mike Costin was there as team manager, so I got to know him very well. We got to talk to customers isolated in the engine and gearbox place, just Graham and myself. We confided in each other all our ambitions and everything like that, and we became very close friends, Graham was like an elder brother to me. Graham got to go racing through his connections with Lotus customers which seemed a way in to the racing scene. Another customer John Fredman wanted a bit of fun racing and after building his car needed someone to do the big races with him so John made his race debut during 1957. “When I built this Lotus, my uncle had a lease on some property with 3 or 4 years to run and he offered me this mews in Earls Court – 9 flats with garages underneath. Too good to turn down, so I decided to leave Lotus to start my own garage. The customer car was shipped down there and we built it in the Earls Court garages with half the mechanics from Lotus working on it for Fredman to get it ready for its first race. We completed the car in the summer and there was this meeting at Crystal Palace, I got pole position in this Lotus XI. I was so green and confident the guy by me went off first, so I came second in my first race. My next race at Mallory Park we had some problems with the transmission so I started from the back of the grid and managed to win that one, my first win in second race from back down in the grid which was very satisfactory. The third race I did in the Lotus XI was at Spa. In those days you didn’t need an international licence to go abroad, a competition licence was sufficient. Danny Magulies (by now the garage manager) got this entry in the sports car race with Jags, Aston Martins and everything; we were in the lower classes with Oscas. After the first hour I was leading my class by 5 minutes and the mechanics rushed out and tried to slow me down, although I was really comfortable, I wasn’t over doing it. I was quite relaxed; I could have gone on all night and then I went off on the next corner, total lack of concentration. I thought should I change down or maybe not to save the engine, it completely threw me. In those days they didn’t have Armco and I went through a couple of cow fields past all the cows. This was middle of ‘57. The next race was the Oulton Park Television Trophy. In those days there wasn’t much motor racing on television and I got interviewed on the telly by the well known commentator Raymond Baxter because I won both races.
D.H. The garages at Shaftsbury Mews, off Stratford Road, have been converted now and new flats built, but they still hold some special motor racing history. At this time Keith Duckworth really wanted to come into business, but John wasn’t that keen on doing engine work…he wanted to build race cars and race them. Mike Costin came up with some cash as he wanted to leave Lotus as well and acquired some premises, so Duckworth decided to go with him. The rest, as they say, is engineering history. John hints, with a grin, it may have become Camworth instead of Cosworth, but doesn’t really dwell on might have beens.
I was more keen on racing, which meant being out of the country for more than half the year. Keith was looking for someone who was more committed to being around so we agreed to part company. Plus, Mike had the cash, wherewithal and knowledge. He was a brilliant engineer as well.
The Esso competition department bought out John Fredman and gave the Lotus XI to John to race in 1958.
They asked if I would I sign with Esso and then use their petrol and they’d pay me so much to race. I thought I’m going to make money and went to Goodwood, the most satisfying race I’ve ever done. We had problems in practice again and I started at the back of the grid in the Chichester Cup and I worked my way through the field. Going into the last lap I was second and coming down towards Lavant I could see the leader of the race being held up by back markers. I got right up to their tails, the leader was overtaking the two back markers and my only way through was the inside on the grass, which I did. I went first into Woodcote and won the race and broke the 1100cc lap record on that lap which stayed for two years. That was very satisfying, my first race of the 1958 season. Then Danny was very keen on going abroad as there was more starting money and that sort of thing. We started going to France, Italy, Portugal and Sweden and all over the place. In hindsight I should’ve stayed in England, I did a few home races, but not nearly as many as I was doing on the continent.
Building up experience and a reputation in SportsCar racing, John then looked at Formula 2, which he feels was his undoing.
I was at Reims, where they had a 12 hour sports car race followed by Formula 2, race and Formula 1 Grand Prix the following day. I did the 12 hour race with David Piper and I stuffed it into a sand bank in the early hours of the morning and couldn’t dig it out. The next day Brian Naylor wanted to sell his Cooper and when they were practicing for the race the following day, I decided to do a few laps to try it out. I had no idea at the time, but apparently when Colin Chapman saw me driving a Cooper, it made him so furious that he did not talk to me properly for the next two years! Only then have I learned that Colin had actually lined me up for the Lotus drive next to Alan Stacey the following year, because his other driver Keith Hall was leaving. So he had to look for another driver and signed someone named Jimmy Clark, who was driving for Border Reivers at the time. Both Stacey and Clark quickly graduated to Formula 1, so that was one stage of my career I would do differently if I could start again. At the end of the season I did buy Brian Naylor’s Cooper, although I had seen him have an accident in it up at Aintree. He’d flipped coming through Melling Crossing and he got his foot stuck in the steering wheel and while doing a hundred and something went all the way down to the next corner sliding on the grass. He was in hospital but his only injury was a burnt bum. In the meantime I was approached by Shell, so I said yeah OK and left Esso without a second thought. After that meeting in Reims I had a meeting booked at Vila Real in Portugal, where I organised another entry for David Piper. They’d only just re-made it, it was as if brand new, never been raced on. There was a sports car race and Stirling Moss was in a Maserati, Fangio and everybody was down there. Lovely circuit, wonderful drivers’ circuit, it goes up into the mountains and comes back onto a dual carriageway, quite a way inland. I won the class so far that I was fourth overall. Our Lotus really held the twisty road extremely well and I’d passed lots of Ferraris, Maseratis and things. David was second behind me, so it was a good day for us. Those Portuguese farmers were going really potty though…coming into the middle of the road as we were coming up into the mountains, surrounded with a wall of people. I t was quite scary driving with this crowd…this was supposed to be a race track.
John really enjoyed the feel of the Cooper T43 single-seater, yet was still keeping up his races with SportsCars in the private Lotus. But another missed opportunity came when John was offered a drive with Lola.
Shell came out with this offer for Lola, then a brand new name in sport car racing. I’d never heard of them so I turned that one down. That was actually the year they wiped the floor with everybody. I thought, I don’t want to go to the back of the field with Lola and what did I do? I trusted Colin and bought a Lotus 17. Colin had spent a lot of the winter in California and had very little to do with the design of the Lotus 17, apparently. It was an absolute and total disaster, it wouldn’t handle…diabolical. I spent the whole season trying to get the car to handle reliably. A pretty, lovely little car but absolutely hopeless, I don’t think it won anything, it didn’t handle at all. That was a disaster that season, as I was running the Lotus 17 and the Formula 2 Cooper, which kept on breaking gearboxes. I had a very early Citroën based gearbox, but it couldn’t stand the Coventry-Climax power. The engines were splitting the box and gearbox casing every time. Next year, I sold that Cooper to Peter Westbury.
For the 1962 season John, now living in Sunbury opposite the Welsh singer Tom Jones, made connections with the Emeryson operation which he rates as the high point of his driving career. Working part-time with Peter Jopp led to an opportunity to race Paul Emery’s new creation in the early season Brussels GP that consisted of three aggregated heats. As cars dropped out, John worked his way up to finish fourth in the second heat, which impressed the people of Emeryson sufficiently enough to offer him a job. They were going to run only one driver, but now would make it a two car team.
They’d employed a guy that hadn’t come over from the States yet, who was supposed to be America’s answer to Stirling Moss. They built a new car, which was quite revolutionary. Paul Emery was a brilliant designer, but he had no money and wasn’t a business man at all. Colin Chapman was a brilliant business man and a brilliant designer. Lovely chap Paul Emery, his cars on the drawing board were very similar to the cars racing today. This car that he built was lower and sleeker than anything that was on the track at the time and the radiator was under my knees on the floor. He was the first person to think really of ground effects, the pressure was going to come up under the radiator to do the cooling. Goodwood was our first outing, it went down unpainted and I took this aluminium can out on the track and it was pissing with rain in practice and I just could not believe the handling. I just could not un-stick this car, it was unbelievable, I had never driven a car that handles as well.
This was actually to be the car for new star driver Tony Settember. Paul Emery’s lack of funds had forced him to sell out to Hugh Powell, the son of a Californian Estate Agent. Although now in charge, Hugh wasn’t yet 21, Tony Settember was his guardian and was looking after him in the UK.
When he finally arrived, Tony Settember couldn’t fit into the car. Hugh was a very nice chap and said that I’ve got to keep it and they’ll build a new one for him. In the meantime, Tony went in the previous year’s car, and insisted on switching the engines over. I had last year’s engine in the new car and he had last year’s car with the new engine. In this shape we all went up to Aintree and in practice I got myself into the fifth row on the grid. Tony Settember with his powerful engine was at the back of the grid and was really storming about the place that the engine is no bloody good. I put his crash helmet on and went out to test his car and did one flying lap and put a pretty much identical time to myself in practice. Back in the garage I was able to persuade everybody that I don’t see a lot wrong with this engine, and we don’t need the mechanics working all night on it. From that moment on Tony practically never spoke to me again, really extraordinary attitude. There wasn’t a big scene or anything, but he just completely isolated himself because I’d done that and sort of shamed him I suppose.
In the race itself, the Aintree BARC 200, John finished an impressive 6th, next up was Silverstone for the Daily Express meeting where everybody of note came.
I then got fairly well up, third row in front of both Brabham and Salvadori…which was rather funny because that was just a few years after I was their mechanic at Cooper…in this new Emeryson still with a 2 year old Coventry-Climax engine, ahead of several V8s. I had Bruce McLaren in front of me on the grid and made a good start. I could have actually taken the lead at the first corner from the third row, but I tucked in behind Graham and Jimmy Clark. I stuck at this for a few laps and then things started to go wrong. I think my gear lever fell off and later on the clutch started to go and I eventually finished 11th. I dropped right through the field, not through my own doing. Reg Parnell was impressed and asked me if I had a contract with Emeryson. I did, but I haven’t signed it yet because they’ve been farting around with it. So he said that Roy Salvadori wants to retire, and would I like to take over his position next season? So right then and there I signed up, with John Surtees as team-mate.
During that 1962 season John gained an entry for what would become his first world championship race at the Belgian Grand Prix. He was entered by Parnell’s team Bowmaker in the Emeryson, but it all ended up bit differently.
That was a total disaster. I can’t remember what the problem was with the car, but in the end I drove a borrowed Lotus 18 belonging to a German guy, Wolfgang Seidel. I did one practice lap or something then right on the starting grid. I couldn’t get up to top speed, the Lotus just had the wrong gear ratio, basically. I shouldn’t have carried on but I did. I thought what the hell I might as well get to the finish, it was hopeless. I pottered on to the end of the Grand Prix and got slated for it. Which was probably right, I should have just pulled in. Then I did another very stupid thing, although I didn’t know it at the time. Emeryson were booked to go out to Solitude which is down near Stuttgart like a mini Nürburgring, about a 7 mile lap all through the lakes and mountains, quite interesting. I’d always wanted to do it.
That next race meeting proved to be a turning point in John’s driving career. Parnell’s Bowmaker team were not going to Solitude and although John expected an entry with Emeryson they were saving it for the British GP and were only taking one car despite having an entry for two. So John borrowed a private Emeryson from Gerry Ashmore and was on his way to Germany.
We arrived quite late on the second day of practice and I went out in the car and as it was set-up for Brands Hatch, it was totally unsuitable to the circuit, really un-driveable and too slow. They had dry weather tyres on the back and wet weather tyres on the front. I was going to get some from Lotus or Dunlop, but didn’t have time to change and had to go out. I spun it a couple of times, it was getting very, very hairy and it had started raining slightly. I was just coming through the final bend, I lost it in the first part and thought I’d get round somehow and I spun it. I went backwards through these wooden sections by the side of the road. It had a fibreglass fuel tank in that old Emeryson which formed part of the driver’s seat. So it was like sitting in a fuel tank, which burst and I was covered in fuel as it somersaulted backwards into the forest. I’m now upside down, underneath it. Ignition switch…woof!…the whole thing went up and I thought this is my lot, end of my days. I seemed to get a bit of room under the car and thought if I’m really careful I might get out of this. I got out between the windscreen and ground and ran away. My friend Lewis-Evans had died because they said he had run and fanned the flames and I thought of him and got on the ground and covered myself with all these dead leaves and stuff. By this time the forest fire has started and the fire brigade arrived with the fire extinguishers and they thought I was still in the car, so started to battle the flames there. Finally they heard me screaming and put me out. I just sat by the roadside, they were ages and ages coming with the ambulance as the Germans sent it very correctly around the track. I was only 100 yards from the pits and they sent them seven miles around the circuit. I realised afterwards what had saved my life was a little wire fence that was nailed to a tree and one wheel was just hooked over that wire holding the car up. Someone took a picture of that and I’ve still got the photograph. I was in hospital for about three months in Germany. Reg came to see me and said that I should not drive rest of the season…so I lost my drive and decided to not do anything more that year.
John was badly burnt in the accident as the burns on his right arm testify as well as further scars down his back. For 1963 raced again for Parnell, mainly in the Lotus BRM and Lola Ford next to Mike Hailwood and young Chris Amon.
Chris and I did most of that season together and that’s when I finished 13th in the British GP in the Lola. It didn’t handle well at all, not as good as the Emeryson…not a patch.
John was due to drive for Parnell again next season but Reg died unexpectedly after a surgery in January. His son Tim had little choice but to scale down the outfit’s budget, and that was it for John, who had an enforced break from racing during the 1964 and ‘65 seasons, with only a few irregular outings.
I remember doing some stadium racing for Paul Emery in single-seater midgets. I could be leading the race and never know it, covered in dust you didn’t know where the hell you were. Great fun.
John‘s final outing was with a significant footnote in racing history at his favourite circuit in England.
It was 1966 and I’ve got a record of that because it’s the only time I had a car with the V8 Coventry-Climax. But my last race I ever did was at Oulton Park. I raced this BRP with this Godiva 3-litre engine, which was one of only few occasions it was ever raced. John Willment bought this engine and put it into an ex-Innes Ireland car, and he asked if I could drive it. Innes was slim and they made the race seat very slim and of several drivers I was one of the slimmest. I drove this car at Oulton Park and coming down over the top on the straight I looked to see where my competitors were and all I could see was white in the mirrors and suddenly realised my engine had blown up. I cruised into the pits and it was all over.
Apart from a record breaking run to Rome and back in 1969 with his older brother in the Morris Minor that was it for active motor sport. The rides had begun to dry up and John puts that down to his easy attitude.
I think I was not diligent enough, going out and selling myself. After my accident, people saw me race in the Lola round the back of the field. I’d just had an accident everybody assumed that it had change me. But we were at the back because the car couldn’t do more. I wished we’d had at least a more powerful engine. Starting the next season I actually got Reg Parnell quite interested in Paul Emery and what he was designing. He could salvage his old car, which was so much better than the Lolas we were racing. It was not in the same class…a fabulous car. I had no intention of retiring, I was just not putting myself about enough, I had my family growing up and that sort of thing. My wife found this guy who wanted to start up an electric appliance factory over here. I helped him out with that and my only real thought was if I could make enough money to go motor racing. I had no intention of giving up but one thing lead to another and I was spending all my time and energy with this guy and it didn’t happen. Also in the back of my mind I was getting pressured by my parents and family that I shouldn’t be motor racing when all my friends were snuffing it. It was partly financial and partly bowing to family pressure. In retrospect I wish I hadn’t, as I know in my own heart that I could have gone on for another ten years and have a few good ones. Looking at the years when they started to televise I was looking at these guys racing and thought I could do better than that. There was nobody who really stood out until Ayrton Senna.
When asked about the fast drivers of his day, a few names spring to mind, and John is not neglecting himself either.
Well, Graham and I were fairly similar I think. There was a race I did in France at Clermont-Ferrand, I had a one off drive in the Denny Hume Cooper and at one stage I was actually leading Graham. Graham took me on the winding bits down the hill, I hadn’t got the power to get up the hill. He was driving a works Lotus and I was driving this aluminium special. I know I could’ve handle him in the same car. I rated Graham. Jimmy Clark must be one of the greats, but apart from that occasion at Silverstone I never got really to race too terribly close to him. Stirling Moss of course was brilliant, he was my hero I suppose. I remember having a write-up about one of the Brussels GPs. He was the leader driving a Porsche, I was driving an Emeryson and for several laps I hung onto him. They were surprised how I’d managed to hang onto Stirling Moss up to the end of the race. It was quite interesting following him round, he obviously eased up a little bit as he was leading.
The observant fans will still see John at the major historic festivals, but he keeps a typical modest low-key approach. You’ll usually find him near one of his beloved Emerysons in the paddock, occasionally trying one on for size and you can tell he’s aching to get out on the track again. At the recent GP Live event at Donington, due to a mix up with hotel arrangements and a full evening at the Lodge chewing the fat with old friend and rival David Piper, John ended up spending the night kipping down with some Dutch racers in the back of their transporter…just like the good old days! And he still is an avid follower of the sport, although he admits to get very annoyed with (in his words) the petty rules they have these days!
about John Campbell-Jones
