1965 British at Sllverstone by John Rhodes for Motor Sport Magazine
How dld you make the leap f rom Formula Junior star to GP drlver?
I had enjoyed success with Midland Racing Partnership and then with Ausper in FJunior. This in turn led to me driving for Bob Gerard in Formula Libre. He was a gentleman driver in the truest sense; a really good man who entered cars out of sheer enthusiasm for motor racing. Bob had a couple of old Coopers, one with Coventry-Climax power and the other with a Ford engine. We raced everywhere and lived off štart money as you did back then. ľd won the Driver of the Day award at Mallory Park with one of his cars and Bob decided to enter me in the British Grand Prix.
The race didn’t exactly go to plan though, did it?
The Cooper had electrical niggles which ended my run. I forget how many laps I did but, to telí the truth, I wasn’t as fast as I would háve liked and had qualified near the back.
Not an auspicious GP debut, then?
To be perfectly honest, there’s only so múch you can do with outdated equipment. Thaťs not intended as a comment on Bob or his preparation – he was meticulous. I always loved single-seaters, and we did well in Libre events, scoring quite a few wins. That T60 was a really nice car to drive. Iťs just that you can’t expect to be running up front with the Clarks or the Brabhams in a three-year-old car. Butwe couldn’r afford a new one, so that was that.
Did you come close to havlng any more GP outings?
No, not really. My next event was a non-championship race at Enna. After Silverstone, we discovered a crack in the frame which was a worry. Well, at Enna the car went off without any assistance; just turned left. I was left sitting there with the basic tub and not much else. Somehow, Bob managed to find the parts to rebuild the car as we desperately needed the štart money. I was aching all over and had fashioned a crutch out of a branch to hobble around with. I was black and blue. We made the štart, but at the second corner, it did the same thing again and got horribly out of shape. That was the beginning of the end for me in single-seaters. ľd liked to háve carried on but I had a family and a mortgage and I was never going to get rich driving for Bob, so I thought ‘What next?’.
Hence the move Into saloon cars with the works Mini Coopers…
Absolutely. During my Cooper FJunior days, I had built cars at the factory down in Surbiton and got to know Ginger Devlin. I was at Silverstone testing the GP car when Cooper was trying out the Mini. I asked if I could have a go and went quite well. That in time led to a contract, a retainer, štart money…
Any regrets on changlng disciplines?
None whatsoever. I had a wonderful time racing the Minis. Iťs nice to have been a GP driver, if only briefly, but that ľm remembered as a saloon car driver is fine with me.
