Anthony Francis O’Connell Maggs (9 February 1937 in Pretoria, South Africa – 2 June 2009) Tony Maggs competed in 27 F1 World Championship Grands Prix, making his debut in July 1961. He achieved three podiums and scored 26 championship points. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Born into a farming family in Pretoria, South Africa, on the 9th February 1937, it was expected that Anthony Francis O’Connell Maggs would become involved in the family business but he instead chose to forge a solid and successful racing career. Starting with touring car races he would go on to race at Le Mans three times plus contest 27 F1 World Championship Grands Prix, taking three podiums, and was the first South African to take part in an F1 Grand Prix.
He started racing an Austin-Healey in national events in 1958 and against his father’s wishes journeyed to England the following year to gain further experience. Racing a Lotus Eleven and a Tojeiro, although he retired at the Aintree 200 he took a victory at Silverstone plus a win and several podiums at Goodwood. After shipping the Tojeiro back home, in January 1960 he drove it in a non-championship South African GP, though did not finish. He later told how the Tojeiro would get so hot that while driving it from Cape Town to the Transvaal, records he was carrying in his luggage melted from the heat of the back-axle and discs. He later contested another non-championship race, with a Cooper T51 in September’s Lombank Trophy at Snetterton, but did not finish.
Joining the Chequered Flag stable he raced a Formula Junior Gemini, claiming his first victory in a round at Snetterton in October and finished third in the following round, behind Peter Arundell and Jim Clark. During the year he was teamed with Jim Clark in the Paris 1000km with Essex Racing Team’s Aston Martin DB4 GT but though they started second on the grid they retired with engine problems after 116 laps. Back in South Africa, at the end of the year he entered a Coventry-Climax powered Heron in December’s Cape Grand Prix at Killarney but did not start. Unfortunately the car had the crown wheel assembled the wrong way round, with the result that it had four reverse but no forward gears, but despite the problem being fixed the gearbox seized up while being tested.
His Formula Junior performances had attracted the attention of Ken Tyrrell, who was running Cooper’s European FJunior team, and he signed to race with them in 1961. With an array of spectacular performances, he took eight victories at Goodwood, Magny-Cours, Monza, Karlskoga, Zandvoort, Oulton Park and Montlhery, plus six second places, and was joint champion with Jo Siffert. The year also brought his Grand Prix debut at Aintree in the British GP, driving Louise Bryden-Brown’s Lotus 18 to thirteenth place and he followed this with eleventh in the German GP. He was also active in sports cars and in shared drives in an Aston Martin DB4 GT he was ninth in the 1000km Paris with Sir John Whitmore. At Le Mans with Roy Salvadori, he told how he “managed to spin it through the Esses in practice without touching sides” though they would retire from the race after 19 hours due to a split oil tank. There was also retirement in a shared Jaguar D-Type drive with Austin in the Kyalami 1000km but racing alone in the Coppa Inter-Europa at Monza he finished second with the DB4 GT.
In a footnote to the year’s FJunior racing with the T56, after the season the car was returned to Cooper and subsequently purchased by actor Steve McQueen while he was in Europe. After shipping the car back to America he took a few wins with it in California, most notably at the Santa Barbara road races. Before an upcoming race at Laguna Seca, the Hollywood studios delivered an ultimatum to stop racing or it would be the end of his acting career. At the same time John Cooper had invited him to come to England and race but McQueen made the difficult decision in favour of the movie studios.
After impressing the Cooper team, he was signed as number two to Bruce McLaren for 1962 and he started with fifth in the Dutch Grand Prix. He retired from the next two races in Monaco and Belgium with gearbox problems but had an impressive second place podium result in the French Grand Prix at Rouen-Les-Essarts, behind Dan Gurney. Following this came Germany, but he had a big accident in practice when he went off on oil that had been dropped by Graham Hill’s damaged car. Porsche had allowed a large camera to be fitted to the rear of Carel Godin de Beaufort’s Porsche in order to get speed shots round the circuit. Hill was behind in his BRM, followed by Bruce McLaren and Tony Maggs in their Coopers, but all out of sight of each other, when the mounting broke and the TV camera fell off the Porsche. Soon afterwards Hill came across it lying in the road and, with no way to avoid it, ran over it and his damaged car’s oil poured out onto the road and the car’s rear tyres. He crashed through the bushes and trees but though a rear wheel and suspension was ripped off, he was only shaken and bruised when the car finally came to a halt. Unfortunately, Tony came on the scene unaware of the incident and he hit the oil at full speed, causing his car to spin wildly, bouncing off hedges and trees, but luckily finishing up against the safety fence and some thick bushes. Fortunately, he was only shaken and would later finish ninth in the race. After his lucky escape, there was an ironic twist at the next race, at Aintree, when a camera was attached to Tony’s car during practice, though in the race he went on to finish sixth. This was followed by seventh in Italy and America, and he finished the season on the podium with third place at his home GP at East London. He contested two non-championship races with the Cooper Climax at each end of the year in South Africa, finishing fifth in January’s Cape GP at Killarney, though retired from Kyalami’s Rand GP in December. There were two more races with the DB4 GT in 1962 and he was third at Oulton Park and seventh in the Trophy d’Auvergne at Clermont Ferrand. Switching to an Aston Martin DBR1 he and Bruce McLaren took fourth in the Nurburgring 1000km and there was a second place finish with Bob Olthoff in the Kyalami 9 Hours in an Austin Healey 3000. The year also some outings in a Mini Cooper in the British Touring Car Championship.
Staying with Cooper for 1963, it would prove a difficult season, with Charles Cooper’s health declining and John Cooper out of action after a major accident in a development Mini Cooper. He took points with a fifth place finish at the season opening race in Monaco and was seventh in Belgium, despite crashing near the end of the race. At Spa, the race conditions were so bad that Colin Chapman and BRM’s Tony Rudd considered requesting the race be stopped, as there was also thunder and lightning along with the heavy rain. In the terrible conditions, Tony went off the track due to being unable to see but on pitting for more goggles discovered he had split his radiator. There was a retirement in Holland due to overheating but he was second at Reims, behind Jim Clark, and ahead of drivers including Graham Hill, Jack Brabham, Dan Gurney and Jo Siffert. He took another point with sixth place at Monza and though there were retirements from the US and Mexican races he finished the season with seventh place in his home country’s GP at East London. Away from F1 he was teamed with a number of drivers in a variety of marques, finishing sixth at Silverstone with Lola’s Mk.6 GT though he and B.Olthoff did not finish at the Nurburgring 1000km. He and Jo Bonnier shared a Porsche 718 GTR at Le Mans but their race ended due to an accident. Racing a Lotus 19, he took fourth in the Guards Trophy at Brands Hatch though a highlight was victory with David Piper in the Ferrari 250 GTO at the Kyalami 9 Hours.
Despite his consistency he was dropped by Cooper at the end of the year in favour of Phil Hill so moved to Scuderia Centro Sud for 1964. Although the team’s BRM P57s were not current machinery, and he only contested three races, he had points finishes in two of the three race starts, with sixth in Germany and fourth in a race of attrition in Austria. Of his time with the team, he said “the team management was shambolic, the car poorly prepared and I think they still owe me money today. That car left me upside down in the sand at Zandvoort.” There was a busy schedule in sports car events and racing David Piper’s 250 GTO they were fourth in the 12 Hour Reims and Paris 1000km events plus seventh at the Nurburgring 1000km. Racing solo in the car he was tenth in the Tourist Trophy and sixth in the Angola GP. Driving at Angola, the track ran right through the middle of the town but they only had long-distance, hard compound tyres and he told how “when it started to rain the car became a real handful-so much so that I missed my braking and turned a whole block too late.” In the October they travelled to Kyalami and successfully defended their previous year’s victory, though this time in David Piper’s/Maranello Concessionaires Ferrari 250 LM. He returned to Le Mans and this time shared Maranello Concessionaire’s 250 GTO with Innes Ireland and they came home sixth (and second in the 1500-3000cc GT class). He described his Le Mans time with Innes as “quite an adventure…The clutch was slipping like crazy-we could hardly get the thing out of the pits. Innes would drive it like hell. I would then spend my session trying to get it working again, only for Innes to thrash it again!” Contesting F2 that year with Midland Race Partnerships, he finished second in the Championship, though only by four points behind Mike Spence. Racing MRP’s Lola T54 and T55, there were retirements at Nurburgring, Albi, Oulton Park and Crystal Palace and his finishes included third in the Vanwall Trophy at Snetterton, fourth in Vienna and Clermont Ferrand, seventh at Aintree, eighth in the Grovewood Trophy at Mallory Park, ninth at Brands Hatch and Pau, twelfth at Enna-Pergusa, fifteenth at Reims and eleventh in the season’s final race at Monthlery in late September. He finished thirteenth in the French F2 Trophee and in April that year had participated in the Aintree 200 (opened for F1 and F2 cars) and was seventh overall and second of the F2 drivers.
He recalled a particular time from his racing days at Reims when a number of drivers and mechanics went to a local bar but it eventually developed into a food fight, with potted plants also being thrown. The police were called but as the mechanics responsible had left and Tony and the others persuaded them they know nothing of the incident, the police departed. However, they did not get far as the mechanics had unscrewed their wheel nuts and their wheels fell off as they drove away.
His final world championship appearance came in 1965’s season opener at East London in South Africa, where he qualified Reg Parnell’s Lotus thirteenth and finished eleventh. Following this, he took second place in the Rome GP and fourth at Oulton Park and Pau in MRP’s F2 Lola. In March, continuing in sports cars with the Ferrari 250 LM, he and D.Piper were third in the Sebring 12 Hours though were only sixteenth in the Nurburgring 1000km. There were a number of anecdotes from his time with David Piper. Racing together at Montlhery, the circuit’s banking had been designed for much slower speeds and they “were coming though the banking so fast that we were sideways up there on the rough corrugations and then had to somehow get the car straightened out as we came off the banking at more than 140mph.” On one occasion, one of the mechanics (Fairfax ‘Fax’ Dunn) had a quick temper and he emptied the bucket of soapy water he had been using to clean the windscreen between driver changes onto a French photographer who had been getting in his way! While racing in a rainstorm in the Sebring 12-hour with a Ferrari 250LM although he and D.Piper finished third they had to open the car door round bends to allow the water out of the cockpit. If they hadn’t, the water “flowed under your seat and over your head under acceleration and under your feet and into the dashboard under braking causing all manner of problems.” Tony was planning more European racing but sadly, while racing a Brabham BT20 at Roy Hesketh in Pietermaritzburg, a mechanical failure pitched his car off the track and into an area where spectators were not permitted. An eight year old boy was in the prohibited area and was tragically hit and killed and Tony was so badly affected that he retired from racing. He then concentrated on farming in the Northern Transvaal and later established a nature reserve there and in 1967 survived a light aircraft accident in which his farm manager was killed, with Tony suffering burns as he tried to save others.
Sadly, after a battle with cancer, Tony passed away on June 2nd 2009 at Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, near Hermanus.
