The Hon. John Miles (14 June 1943 – 8 April 2018) was a British racing driver from England.
He participated in 15 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, making his debut on 6 July 1969, in the Lotus 63 4-wheel drive F1 car for which he was the official Team Lotus test driver. He scored a total of 2 championship points with a fifth place in the 1970 South African Grand Prix. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
John Miles participated in 15 World Championship GPs though according to many commentators, his driving talent was greatly underestimated, and alongside his racing he was also an accomplished engineer and road car tester. He was also a jazz afficionado and in 1985 set up his own recording label Miles Music.
Born on 14 June 1943, his father Sir Bernard (later Lord Miles) created London’s Mermaid Theatre and his mother Josephine Wilson was an actress but his racing interest came through his uncles, who were both engineers. An early drive came with an Austin 7, which helped him a great deal in understanding car control and he used it for daily driving, circuit racing and the Welsh Rally and used to “drive it from London 200 miles to Oulton Park, practise, race, and drive 200 miles home again, and I don’t think it ever let me down.” He later graduated to an Omega-Jaguar but after racing it once at Debden, and winning the Formule Libre race, he told himself “he’d better get rid of it before it goes wrong or I kill myself.”
He began racing seriously in sports cars with a Ford-powered Diva GT, taking class wins at Mallory Park, Goodwood and Brands Hatch, then in 1965 took several class wins and podium placings at Brands Hatch, Mallory Park, Monthlery and Snetterton on his way to winning the Redex Sportscar Championship. He also gained international success when (aged 20), he and Peter Jackson had a class victory (1000cc prototype class) at the Nurburgring 1000Km.
On Boxing Day at Brands Hatch, Lotus debuted the new Lotus 47 coupe (Jackie Oliver was also in a sister car) and he won and set fastest lap, beating a field of Ferraris, Cobras, E-Types. It proved to an exceptionally successful year for him with a Willment sponsored Lotus Elan and he had nine straight wins on his way to taking the Autosport Championship. Triumphs included the Sussex Trophy at Goodwood, the Grovewood Trophy at Mallory Park, Brands Hatch’s Guards Trophy and the British Eagle Trophy (the latter with a Lotus 47) and there were wins at at Mallory Park and Vila Real (Portugal). However, the Championship started with a dramatic incident at the first race, at Brands Hatch, when the Elan’s bonnet flew open on the first lap of a 15 lap race. He rushed into the pits, and after having it wrenched off, he rejoined in fifteenth place. By lap 10 he was third and with two laps to go passed Tony Lanfranchi’s V8 TVR Griffith for second. Going into the last corner on the final lap, he managed to get his nose inside leader Bernard Unett’s Le Mans Tiger and won by a matter of feet in the dash to the line. The spectators in their cars greeted the win by sounding their horns. Describing the season, he said “The Elan won just about everything, too, until the mid-engined cars began to come through. I did mainly British events, although we had a trip to Portugal and did those hairy road circuits at Vila Real, Cascais and Montes Claros, around the parks. When you look at those places today you think, ‘Bloody hell!’ Willment also gave me a race at Brands Hatch in its Cobra coupé, and I won that.” At the end of the year he was third in the Grovewood Awards.
After dominating with his Lotus Elan, he came to the attention of Lotus sales director Graham Arnold, who quickly informed Colin Chapman and advised him to keep an eye on him. John’s chance came quickly, after Jim Clark missed the Oulton Park Gold Cup, and he placed him in his Lotus Cortina. He told how he was lying under the Elan and working on it during practice when somebody kicked his legs. After crawling from under the car, Chapman was standing there and though he’d never met him before, and he didn’t introduce himself, he just said “Do you want to drive a Cortina? Jim Clark hasn’t turned up. We need to get the car out’. So I did four laps in this works Lotus-Cortina”. However, Jim Clark did eventually turn up so he didn’t get to race it.
In 1967 he raced in F3 with a Lotus 41 plus GT in the Lotus 47 and at most meetings would race two different cars and have two practice sessions and two races. F3 at that time was very closely fought though he finished runner up in the Les Leston Championship and said it was a great crowd; “Charles Lucas, Roy Pike, Chris Williams, Derek Bell and the rest, I got on really well with them all. But the Lotus 41 was not an easy car to drive..because it was very short it was unforgiving and needed great precision.” He took victories in GT at Crystal Palace, Mallory Park and Brands Hatch and also had a number of outings in the Saloon Car Championship in a Lotus Cortina. The 41 was lengthened for 1968 and featured a new wedge-shaped body and he gave this Lotus 41X a win on its debut at Silverstone and followed this with victories at Croft, Brands Hatch, Ingliston and Zandvoort. However, he said Chapman expressed no interest in the car and didn’t care whether it ran or not. There were a number of wins in GT on his way to winning the Special GT Championship plus he and Jackie Oliver shared a class win with a 47 in the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch. However, despite his successes, at that time his ambition was not to drive GP cars as his dreams had involved powering GT40s and similar machines around circuits such as Spa and the Nurburgring.
He was promoted to F2 for 1969 but Chapman decided he should test and develop the new four-wheel-drive Lotus 63 F1 car which meant he only contested three F2 races, though he finished third at Vallelunga and fifth at Hockenheim. He also campaigned the Lotus 62 GT but though he won at Ingliston and Brands Hatch described it as being too heavy and having atrocious straight line speed. July saw his F1 debut at the French GP in the Lotus 63 but this opportunity was a poisoned chalice as it only arose because Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt considered it to be too dangerous. Being tasked by Chapman to take on its testing and development duties, John’s persevering with the car led to him having many a frustrating race. After testing it at Snetterton he himself said it was undriveable, “Awful. It would spin, very slowly. It had so much inertia in all that drive train-the drive shafts, the diffs front and rear and the central diff, all of which had to speed up and slow down in response to throttle and brake. And once you’d started to slide it was gone.” There were only 13 entries for the French race at Clermont-Ferrand but he retired from it after one lap when the fuel pump failed. There four other outings with the car during the year but at Silverstone a long pitstop failed to cure gear selection problems, so he resumed with the car stuck in third gear and continued on to finish tenth. He retired at Monza, Mosport and Mexico City and his only finish was a tenth place at Silverstone.
Following G.Hill’s accident at Watkins Glen, and the feeling he wouldn’t be fit to race, he was promoted to co-drive alongside J.Rindt for 1970, with the 63 being sidelined and replaced by the Lotus 72. However, Hill would eventually race for a full season with Rob Walker and at the South African GP, John finished fifth, with Graham sixth. After initially racing the 49 in South Africa, the following race in Jarama, Spain saw him in the new Lotus 72 though he did not qualify. Lotus brought the 49C chassis instead of the 72 for Monaco but frustratingly, though he did not qualify, J.Rindt went on to win the race. In the April he contested a non championship BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone with the 72 but it was a precarious situation for him during this period. He told how “I had no money at all: he paid me £300 a race, and out of that I had to pay my own expenses. Once, flying back from a race, I was so broke I had to ask him if he could give me some money. He pulled a big roll out of his pocket, peeled off a few notes and gave them to me. He regarded me as a sort of grease monkey.” He suffered a string of retirements while his team-mate won five GPs and excelled with the 72 but tragically Rindt was killed at Monza and was crowned World Champion posthumously. At Zeltweg, the race before Monza, after only four laps into the race John’s left front brake shaft broke as he came through a downhill turn but though the car leapt across the road and swerved violently to the right, he managed to get round. The internal dramas at Lotus came to a head in Italy, when he and Chapman had a heated argument over Chapman’s insistence on removing the 72’s wings. After experimenting with various wing settings he eventually found an aero set-up he liked but when he came into the pits during practice, “Chapman sent word to my chief mechanic, Beaky Sims, saying, ‘Take the wings off John’s car’. I said, ‘I don’t want to do that’, but Chapman’s response was just, ‘Do it’. So they took the wings off and I went out. I got to the Curva Grande and I’d never driven such a dangerous thing in my life. The car just snapped into oversteer, and was undriveable. So I tootled round, came straight back to the pits and said to Colin, ‘I can’t drive this car’. After the session ended we had a row in the truck. Colin’s actual words to me were, ‘The only way you’re going to go quick is to take the wings off your car’. I said, ‘Maybe so, Colin, if we had time to sort the car out properly to run without wings. But as it is now I cannot drive that car without wings’. He said, ‘You’ll do as I say’.” John had breakfast with Jochen the following morning and said to him ‘For me, without wings this car is dangerous’ though he simply replied ‘You’ll be all right, John’. After the tragedy, Lotus withdrew from the race and soon after John spent time in France as he was involved in the Steve McQueen Le Mans movie, driving a Ferrari 512S. The team decided to miss the Canadian GP but he was preparing to race at Watkins Glen when he received a call telling him that he’d been replaced by Reine Wisell. He was offered the chance to drive the Lotus F5000 car at Brands Hatch but refused as he had already tested the 70 and described it as ‘a tractor’ so decided to move on.
He had a brief stint at BRM though was employed mainly as a test driver and finished seventh in the non championship Race of Champions at Brands Hatch in the Yardley liveried P153. He also entered a non-championship Rindt Memorial race at Hockenheim and was pleased with their new P160 after some laps in it. However, during the last practice session he was told his drive would be in an old P153 and he admitted to being quite pleased when he had to retire after six laps after water started coming out of the exhaust. He continued in sports cars with a DART Racing Chevron B19 in 1971 and won the RAC and Scottish Sports Car Championship though it was a hectic season and alongside his wins at Croft, Brands Hatch and Silverstone, he had podiums at Oulton Park, Paul Ricard and twice at Thruxton. He also co-drove Malcolm Gartlan Racing’s Chevrolet Camaro with Brian Muir at Paul Ricard and in the following year’s 6 Hours race race the pair took an exciting victory in Malcolm Gartlan’s Ford Capri RS2600, ahead of a Capri driven by Jackie Stewart and Francois Cevert.
John then retired from competition in the mid-1970s, with racing eventually losing its appeal and he went on to have a successful career as a technical journalist and then as a design engineer in the motor industry. He first built engines for Racing Services, providing the engines for Gordon Spice’s Group 1 Capris and after several years went on to join Autocar, conducting road tests for the magazine. His column ‘Miles Behind The Wheel’ specialised in improved versions of ordinary cars and on one occasion while there, he gave a lift to a younger co-worker (who did not know of his background); impressed by his driving, he asked if he’d ever done any racing to which John replied “Yes..A bit.”
After leaving Autocar he joined Lotus Engineering, and would work on the Lotus Sunbeam, the front-wheel-drive Elan, the front-drive Cavalier for America, the Ford Focus, plus projects for Rolls-Royce, Volvo, Kia and Hyundai. He became involved with their F1 work in the early 1990s, setting up the chassis for Mika Hakkinen, Johnny Herbert and Alex Zanardi. After 18 years as a Lotus engineer he was with Aston Martin for three years, working on the DB7 GT, the Vanquish and the Vanquish S, then was involved with the automotive components company Multimatic, working from their UK base in Norfolk.
A jazz lover, he had set up his own recording label Miles Music in 1985 and following Ayrton Senna’ death he recorded some music inspired by him and in 1996 released the CD Tamburello, by Pete King, which won the BT Jazz CD of the Year Award.
John sadly passed away at the age of 74 on April 8, 2018
Profile about John Miles from Autosport June 1969 – by Ian Titchmarsh
thanks to Richard Evans for scans
EVERY racing driver reaches a point in his career where his innate talent will take him no further, and experience must be developed on top of natural ability if he is to progress. Some drivers reach this limit in, say, Formula 3 while others go on finding they can. cope with more and more advanced machinery until a place in a Grand Prix team is theirs. Very much in. the second category is John Miles, now a “lusty 25,” who quit F3 at the top at the end of last year, and has shown in his few F2 drives that this more senior type of racing holds no fears for him.
The 750 MC is often cited as the breeding ground of great chassis designers, but it is doubtful if their friendly rivals at the VSCC would lay claim to having nurtured many works drivers for these designers. Nevertheless a teenage Miles, the proud owner of an Austin Nippy, joined both these clubs and after working up fervour in a concentrated course o£ trials, rallies and driving tests the Nippy was raced round Silverstone by courtesy of the Vintagents. The more race worthy Ulster model followed in 1963 and then, following a real rush of blood, a device called the Omega-Jaguar was acquired from John Wilks. This now-forgotten machine, sporting a bored-out 3.4 engine and “R5s on 3 ins rims!”, was raced once only at equally-forgotten Debden, the only truly memorable moment coming when John encouraged the car to his first outright win.
For the following year it was decided to set about racing properly, and a glance at the Miles pocket and the current scene showed that a Diva GT was a good buy. With help from Divas, the car was assembled at their workshops around a 1650 cc Ford pushrod engine, and Miles ran the car on his own throughout the year in this form, notching up some eight wins and two retirements out of 15 starts. For the Nürburgring 1000 Kms a 1-litre motor was slotted in, and with Peter Jackson codriving they won their prototype class, “through sheer doggedness” according to a contemporary report.
Having seen what Willment had done for Boley Pittard during the year, “at the beginning of 19^5 I offered myself to Jeff Uren, who agreed that Wilment would supply and build the engine while I did all the preparation and worked for them as a sort of progress-chaser cum general dogs’ body in their competition department.” This was the move which set Miles on the right road once and for all, for the red and white Diva started in 18 club races that year, and came back with 16 outright or class wins and two thirds. And so, after only two seasons of real racing, not only the Redex GT Championship but also the third Grovewood Award were his.
With Willment now enthusiastically behind him, John took the decision which was to bring him right into the limelight, for so far, all his winning had been done at club level. The Diva was sold and a brand new Competition Lotus Elan took its place with a vengeance. Once again Miles supplied the car (out of the Diva’s proceeds), while Willment came up with one of their best Lotus twin-cams and did all the mechanical work gratis. This car carried all before it, winning outright in its first nine Nationals and Internationals and carrying off the Autosport Championship. “We were never beaten by another Elan, but when Digby Martland and the Chevron GT came along 1 knew the writing was on the wall.”
Something larger was tried at Brands one day when John borrowed one of the numerous Cobras which Willment had lying around the shop in those days and beat Ron Fry’s GT40. “The sheer physical effort of driving one of those cars is tremendous,” but more important still, people in high places had taken notice of the lanky, bespectacled young man whose forceful style kept him winning races. In April an F3 test drive was arranged by Lotus together with Jack Oliver “but, quite simply, I had never driven a single-seater before and so I was a second slower and Oliver got the drive.”
Colin Chapman had not forgotten him, for a Lotus Cortina was made available at the Oulton Park Gold Cup meeting, but after practicing faster than Peter Arundell, sundry mechanical disorders deprived John of a car on race-day. A favourite Miles expression is “trauma”: in fact, one of the most traumatic experiences came on his test day for the Lotus Components drive when the prototype Europa caught fire at Brands and melted just about everything in sight except a rapidly fleeing Miles.
The three-year contract which he signed with Lotus brought him drives in both the development Europa and the “hair-dryer” F3 41. In no time at all the F3 car was being driven with the same verve as the long line of GTs and, although Lotus confined their racing to this country, Miles was mixing it with the leaders to such an extent that at the last British International of the year at Brands he was fastest in practice, ahead of Courage, Pescarolo, Gethin, Ahrens et al, and took third place in the final in appallingly wet conditions. The few Lotus Cortina drives “usually expired in a cloud of oil” but a highlight of the year was a class win in the BOAC 500 with Jack Oliver in a Europa. In every BOAC 500, twice with Oliver and once with Brian Muir, John has won his class in this race “although we covered 12 fewer laps this year in the 62 than the year before due to various troubles.”
Gold Leaf sponsorship in 1968 brought lots more dramas, but out of six Internationals with the F3 41X John scored four wins, which marked him out as one of the 6iite in die Formula. The Europa was also raced at meetings up and down the country, but in the Internationals, it met with Porsches and Chevrons which deprived it of the significant 2-litre class win. As the year passed it became clear that Miles’ talents had far outgrown F3, but nothing better came his way apart from a cockpit-fitting session in an FI Lotus just before the Belgian GP. This came to nothing when Oliver kept the drive, although John had decided that an Fl debut at Spa wasn’t a good thing, and with only one works F2 car being run nothing could be offered there either.
“I decided that I couldn’t do any better in F3 and if I stayed on it would only do me harm,” so for 1969 it had to be something better. Chevron were looking for a works driver and Miles seemed an ideal choice: “It was real cloak-and-dagger stuff. We all met at some sinister pub halfway between London and Bolton and discussed the deal, but it turned out they wanted to do F3 as well as GT racing so I decided to stay with Lotus.” This year Lotus have got themselves two F3 specialists and so John has not been called upon to perform in the 59, and this has thus far left him with the first of the Type 62 G6 cars and very few races. The latter is rather too good a tool for club races but Gold Leaf don’t sell many fags abroad and, in general aren’t interested in Continental events.
With Lotus once again running a two-car F2 team for their Grand Prix stars, a spare car for Miles when the “kings” are away must be on the cards from time to time, although the first outing at Jarama was rather less than heartening. After he had set sixth fastest time in practice ahead of team-mate Alan Rollinson, the FVA’s fuel pressure disappeared on the warming-up lap, and by the time the car was going again an obstructive marshal would not let him join the grid. “I know now that I should have ignored him and driven on,” but this first taste of F2 is summed up as “fabulous.” His second drive in the 59B at Hockenheim the other weekend * brought fifth place behind the leading quartet after he had lost their tow on the oily circuit; he is due to drive it again at Zandvoort next month.
Like most other promising young British drivers John hankers after an Fl seat, which in his case should not be so far off, but he cannot conceal his enthusiasm for CanAm racing, which to him represents the ultimate in motor sport: “CanAm is extra grouse; just think of all that mumbo coming out of the corners!” Clearly, the whole piospect of a 7-litre G7 car really turns him on: “I think the real reason why I prefer CanAm is because I’m more used to sports cars.” However, when pressed, John will admit that he would like to aim for the very top of the tree, the World Championship, “but you shouldn’t go around saying you want to be World Champion.”
John actually drove a Formula 1 car for the first-time last week-nothing less than the new 4wd Lotus 63, for a Press demonstration at Hethel.
Above all else, John Miles is a motor racing enthusiast, and among professional racing drivers this quality is not as common as might be thought. People who say they will give up racing unless they “make it” within a year or so leave him speechless. Although cash, self-glorification and popular acclaim, the motivations of other men, may all play their part in his complex character, he gives the impression that he will go on driving anything in which he can give a reasonable account of himself, and enjoy it, as 1ong as there are cars to drive. “I would be happier to be top of F2 or CanAm rather than halfway there in Fl.”
He probably displays more honesty and realism in his outlook than most of his rivals, being one of the few drivers who will admit that he was beaten fair and square without moaning that his tire pressures were 1/2 lb. out. Even after his epic drive through the field at the British GP F3 race last year, he was the first to acknowledge that the Firestone YBl1s, which he had and the others didn’t, played a vital role. Nevertheless, when something upsets him he tends to sink into a mood which is hard to conceal Uses this gives a wrong impression: “ People tend to think I’m not satisfied with that I am doing, but in fact driving as I am for Lotus at the moment is great and I’m happy”.
The spate of fatal accidents couple of year have made John safety-conscious: “A few year ago I would not have given safety precautions thought, but when accident start happening to the most unlike people realise that it’s worth concerning with that them great deal. I can’t see that it ference to the spectacle or a tree is 10 inches or 100 miles from the edge of the road I’m all in favour of having crash barriers wherever necessary.”
To Miles motor racing is a way of life which he hopes to lead for a very long time to come, although recently he has become involved in engine tuning as the third partner in Racing Services, operating the company’s dynamometer. “I’d also like to do something to help the competitor at club level, but at the moment I’m not quite sure of the best way of doing this.” And if all else fails he could always turn to journalism, as his sometimes outrageous and often amusing observations of the racing scene in Cars and Car Conversions showed a couple of years ago!
