Ridin' With My Top Down

Look at this video I found:

That's Clay Regazzoni taking his BRM for a recon lap at the Österreichring in 1973. '73 gave us Smoke on the Water and Nutbush City Limits in music, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that in Formula 1 it was a year of both triumph and tragedy as well

You might think you don't know this this driver, but if you've seen Rush then you kinda do. This is the guy with the Dolmio moustache who befriended Niki (as much as you can befriend someone like Niki) and smoothed his path to Ferrari. A man with a name every bit as dashing as his face: Gianclaudio "Clay" Regazzoni.

They had to tone down the mow for the movie, cinemas couldn't afford the dry-cleaning. (Image via GrandPrix.com)

In legacy he was a bit like Gilles Villeneuve - didn't actually do much winning, but the tifosi loved him and never forgot him. Enzo described him best:

The inimitable Clay never lets up. Bon viveur, dancer, playboy, footballer, tennis player and, in his spare time, driver. He’s the ideal guest at the most unusual fashion shows, the great resource of women’s magazines. – Enzo Ferrari

Thing was, in 1973 he was kind of "between contracts" with Ferrari, so he found a job with BRM instead - a team half-forgotten now, but well-known and weirdly popular in their day. BRM had been founded as a British pride team, a massive, industry-supported team intended to showcase British engineering expertise. On that level it backfired badly, as they were never especially good at it, and even in 1973, nearly 30 years after their founding, the handicaps of that approach were still weighing on them. That year's car, the P (for Project) 160 had a handicap located between the driver and the rear wing called the P142, a V12 engine built by BRM themselves. In those days only three teams built their own engines, and of the three BRM had the smallest budget to do it on. Consequently, their V12 was completely gutless, the drivers complaining "all the horsepower went down the exhaust pipes."

Turn up the volume and watch it again. Yeah, it's no Matra, but still a great set of pipes.

On the other hand the balance and handling of the P160 was said to be quite good, but I have to wonder about that myself. Any car's handling seems better when it hasn't got any power, like my Corolla, which seems to be suspended on rubber bands but goes okay thanks to a miserable 1.6-litre engine.

Unboxing the sports suspension pack.

Either way, the BRM was going to be at a huge disadvantage here at the Österreichring, the "Austria-ring" in the former Habsburg playground of Styria. With those stunning mountain views, that first blast along the top of the ridge with bare dirt either side, it looks more like Pikes Peak than a Grand Prix venue. If you don't recognise that section, that's because it isn't there anymore. Twenty-four years after Clay's lap, Austrian phone company A1 put up some money for the track to be rebuilt, and the fast, mad part of the lap was ground off. The new A1-Ring became Michael Schumacher's bogey track and ground zero for most of his worst moments. It hasn't hosted a Grand Prix in years, but in 2011 it was bought up by a prominent Austrian soft drink company who are refurbishing it yet again and hoping to stage a Grand Prix. I'll let you have a wild guess who that might be.

You can see why they had to clip its wings though: the last race in this configuration was in 1987, so God only knows how frightening it was in a 1,000-horsepower turbo car. The second turn, the long, banked right-hander with the red-and-yellow Bosch sign on the outside, that's the Boschkurve, a corner that used to keep the drivers getting any sleep at night. The G-forces must have been just incredible, and with an Armco barrier only metres from the track they were probably on your mind, reminding you of just how hard you were going to hit the barrier if anything let go. With slick tyres and downforce to make the steering nice and heavy, Stefan Johansson once said, "At Boschkurve I literally have to wedge my elbows against the cockpit sides to put enough force on the wheel."

But Clay's not milking it very hard today, just cruisin' with a nigga lean, having a look at what the track, or the car, or both, are like today. Nowadays we'd call it an installation lap - kick the tyres, check for oil leaks, make sure the brakes are working (that's important) - but of course Clay has no data sensors sending telemetry to the pits, just his own ears, his own eyes, and his own arse telling him what the car is doing.

So on the exit of Boschkurve he stays wide and lets a dark-blue car past. No mistaking the white helmet with the tartan band, it's Jackie Stewart in his Tyrrell. Just two weeks before, Jackie had won the German GP at the Nürburgring, his twenty-seventh and last win, a figure was going to remain a record for a long time yet. In Italy he was destined to have a few problems, but still nail down enough points to make his third World Championship a done deal.

Then at the left-hander we see one of the sinister black Shadows go by, driven by I-don't-know-who (anyone know for sure?), but I'll take a guess at Jackie Oliver, who'd later rip the guts out of the Shadow team by becoming a founding partner at Arrows. After that it's a white March with a tall airbox - well that could only be James Hunt, in his debut season driving for Alexander, third Baron Hesketh of Hesketh, who'd taken to the sport in a way nobody had seen before.

Champagne and pheasants in hired marquees with Lady Hesketh, Alexander’s mother, complete with black eye-patch, presiding in a state of distraction; helicopters that flew ice and birds and more champers in and out of circuits; Master James cavorting among the Beautiful People with the exquisite Suzy, his model of a wife who eventually left him for the actor Richard Burton. It was a year of parties and night life, some good race results in an ever-improving car designed by Dr Harvey Postlethwaite, PhD. – Keith Botsford

James later got an awful lot of support from Marlboro and had to get into a habit of transferring his Rothmans cigarettes to Marlboro packets, which must have taken a while because he was a 40-a-day kind of guy. Marlboro of course were in bed with McLaren by then (not the mention the Holden Dealer Team), and would later switch to Ferrari, but if you want to know where Marlboro started in motorsport, it was right here, with BRM. Yes, the single most recognisable racecar livery of all time, and its first deployment was on a car nobody remembers.

Once Marlboro left them for McLaren, BRM never recovered. They closed up shop in '77 after their new car turned out to be too big to fit into a packing crate (not a good sign). Their final driver decided all Formula 1 teams were morons and returned to his home country - which, since his name was Larry Perkins, was here. Alan Jones was buying rides by then, so was the last time there were two Aussies in Formula 1 until Webber and Ricciardo last year.

As for Clay himself, he lost his job at Ferrari thanks to Niki's accident in '76. Ferrari hired another driver named Reutemann to replace Niki, and since Niki stubbornly refused to die, there was no room for Clay and he found himself bumped. From there he fell into one backmarker team after another, racing just because he loved it, until his career abruptly ended in loud noise and twisted aluminium. At Long Beach in 1980, his car lost its brakes in the worst possible place - the end of Shoreline Drive, where he was doing about 280km/h - and unable to stop, he ploughed into a retired car. When he regained consciousness, Clay realised he couldn't feel his legs. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair, but being the sort of man he was, he didn't let it upset him for long.

I was in hospital for a long time, and felt very sorry for myself, but when something like this happens, you move into a different world – a world you never thought about. And you feel ashamed. I remember Gunnar Nilsson talking about the children in his cancer hospital, how he had had years of good life which they would never have.

As for me, I can drive my Ferrari Daytona. I have my driving school for handicapped people. I can still go to the races, be part of them. I don’t want to be pitied. I have accepted that the miracle will not happen, but life can still be worth something. – Clay Regazzoni

But my favourite anecdote about Clay, the one that sums him all up, really, comes from Jonesy - and refers to the very same year as our video above:

Clay was once invited by Louis Stanley to look over BRM. Lou was there in his three-acre office and took Clay through his works and said, "My boy, you have seen my car and my organisation – with my team and my factory we will make you World Champion.” Clay said: “Fucka the Championship, how mucha you pay?"