The Roaring Season

Steve Holmes wrote:[ATTACH=CONFIG]44034[/ATTACH]

Too hard for me. I'll leave this one to Ray.

A hard one to pick...

But it must be the Lotus FVA at Warwick Farm, 1967. Graham Hill broke the gearbox if I recall.

Jack in his 1967 car...

For the life of me I can't pick the circuit. Did Bruce go to Longford?

Steve Holmes wrote:[ATTACH=CONFIG]44928[/ATTACH]

Roy Billington (Jack's chief mechanic) with Jack

Thanks Terry.

Jim Clark in the Lotus 33...

It looks very much like the Warwick Farm starting grid, 1967. Perhaps that's Mike Kable in the white shirt and tie.

Ray Bell wrote:Jim Clark in the Lotus 33...

It looks very much like the Warwick Farm starting grid, 1967. Perhaps that's Mike Kable in the white shirt and tie.

I posted this photo in one of the earlier threads from Bruce's collection.

Steve Holmes wrote:I posted this photo in one of the earlier threads from Bruce's collection.

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This front of grid for the 32nd Australian Grand Prix.

On pole is Jackie Stewart in the 2 L BRM V8
In middle is Jim Clark in the 2.L Lotus 33 Climax V8
Closet is Graham Hill in the vey new 1.6L Lotus 48 Ford FVA

The white nose on second row is Leo Geoghegan's Lotus 39 Climax 4
Beside him is Jack Brabham in the Brabham Repco V8

What is strange is that the normally reliable Graham Howards History of the AGP book has for some reason a completely different grid to the above photo and that in RCN.

I rather suspect that's a glitch in the typesetting, Terry...

Possibly mucked up by the formatting and then unnoticed by proofreaders trying to get the book out and published in time for the 51st Australian Grand Prix. Details like the lap times are correct, just most of the entries are lined up in the wrong spot.

Not Graham's doing at all. Which can't be said for the dog's breakfast he made of the 1949 grid 'explanation'.

By the way, another driver in the last photo is Ian Geoghegan...

He's talking to his older brother, who has his helmet on and is standing next to the Lotus 39.

Feb. 19th. 1967. Warwick Farm.


(Sergent.com info)

khyndart in CA wrote:Feb. 19th. 1967. Warwick Farm.

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(Sergent.com info)

Looking at it again, in the grid for the 1967 32nd AGP there are differences between that in Graham Howards book, RCN and Sergents as above.

For example RCN omits Martin, Scott and Champion.

Perhaps we may never know the true grid, and Sergent's may be the closet.

Terry, you keep referring to the the book, The Official 50-Race History of the Australian Grand Prix, as Graham Howard's book.

It is true that the book was the brainchild of, and the dream of, Graham Howard. He laboured on it, he researched a great deal of it, he nurtured it. But it really looked like it would never happen if it remained his work alone.

To get the book published, Graham was ultimately to rely on Chevron Publications. But once that decision was made, it became necessary to meet deadlines and Graham couldn't meet those on his own.

Because of his knowledge of the Bathurst races, John Medley was called in to write the chapters on Bathurst AGPs of 1938 and 1947, and also the South Australian Centenary Grand Prix of 1936, renamed the 1937 Australian Grand Prix. Stewart Wilson took on the coverage of the easiest era, the races from 1970 to 1985. Easiest because of the great coverage of that era.

Slightly less easy was the task given to the irrepressible Des White, but he was present for most of the races between 1963 and 1969 - and wrote the original reports for RCN on two of them - and so he covered the period in question.

Graham himself had written up the races from 1948 to 1962. There is no question that his diligence in researching these races was superb, for many of them involved drivers no longer alive, people who had long since departed from any connections with the sport. Look at his background to some of the cars, for instance. The detail behind the Rex Law Regal Special is a good example.

So there were 15 races he covered himself, three by John Medley, 16 by Stewart Wilson and seven by Des White. Still there was a problem compiling it all in time and so I was asked to take on the task of covering the Phillip Island races. And I asked if I could also do the Lobethal race because of my fascination for that great circuit.

So you see it was a combined effort, even though Graham did the lion's share of the research of the early races and was thoroughly involved in the compilation of results and probably the selection of photos, and the captions on them. Without him it would not have happened at that time.

But to probably a greater extent, it would never have happened without Ray Berghouse and Tom Floyd, Chevron Publications. It is better referred to as the Chevron AGP book.

The issue at hand, the grid for the 1967 AGP, is a good example of a lack of Howard input. There is no way Graham would have allowed Spencer Martin to have been left off the outside of the third row of the grid. He would have known from the AMS report, if not from original result sheets, that Spencer did a time of 1:33.4 to push Chris Irwin's BRM back to the fourth row.

Des White possibly, if not a staffer from Chevron, seems to have only had the RCN-published grid to work from. And then, I suspect, the typesetting crew or software made a mess of the layout of it. And in the rush it didn't get the kind of attention needed in the proofreading.

You might ask why Bruce Sergent has been able to overcome this (though, unfortunately, without lap times) and I will suggest that it's Donn Anderson's fault. Motorman would not have been available to the crew doing the book, but to New Zealanders this publication would have been their first line of enquiry.

Just to elaborate on my suggestion that Graham 'would never have allowed' this to take place, I put forward his note on the 1949 AGP grid and a question mark hanging over it.

This grid is based on photographs taken before and moments after the start. The photographs unfortunately do not show the left-rear extreme of the grid. There is no doubt the race started with one position on the second row not filled. In the absence of information on practice times it is not possible to work out whether this position might have been filled by George Pearse's MG TB or by Charlie Whatmore's Studebaker, both of which had troubles in practice. Cars not accounted for on the grid are Whatmore, Pearse, Vic Johnson (MG TC) and H. McGuire (MG TC), and it would appear that all four started from the rear of the grid.

Just why anyone would suggest that a car which qualified on the second row would voluntarily start from the rear of the grid defeats me. And to suggest that they did so because they had problems in practice is strange too, for it begs the question, "How did they get a time for the second row, then?"

Those key words, "In the absence of information on practice times..." begin to weigh heavily in explanation of things. I understand that these records became the private possession of John Holmes and therefore nobody got to look at them in recent decades.

What Graham neglected to investigate was the prospect that a fairly fast car practised and didn't start the race. During my research into the event I found this car by a process of elimination. Fortunately there was an entry list published in the AGP book and of the 29 entries only one isn't in the results as either a finisher or a retirement.

This car is listed as the 'Wakeley Special' and when I spoke to the owner, Cyril Tritton, I learned that it was actually a Wolseley Special sporting a 3.4-litre engine from a 25-hp Wolseley. Cyril also explained that he was forbidden by his family to drive in the race and so he arranged for well-known pre-war driver John Pike to take over. This was important to him as he had promised the apprentice who'd worked unpaid overtime to help complete the car that he could be the riding mechanic. The apprentice was Chas Kelly.

Chas told me that they practised but the damage being done to the brand new bodywork by the schrapnel of the runways was too great to justify racing. But in practice they had matched the speed of Kleinig's car all the way down the straights, though they lost out dramatically under brakes.

I don't know if Graham had this entry list when he was doing his research. The amount of detail he had about other cars indicate he might not have.

Ray I agree that many people helped write sections of the book.

The page at the back titled Credits show eight people involved. I think the photos are a little mixed, and besides Ray Bell's name they have someone smiling........

In future perhaps I should refer to as "Graham Howard er al".

On a lighter note, why was the very first AGP, the 1927 race, not included in this official book?

Here indeed is Bruce Sergent's description of the practice lap times for Warwick Farm. Feb. 1967.

"So the stage was set for the 32nd Australian Grand Prix, one of the feature races of the eight Tasman events. The scene was additionally complicated by the arrival of the new compound Dunlops, and by the entry of the prototype Lotus F2 chassis with the FVA 1.6 litre Cosworth-Ford, driven by Graham Hill. Another first Australian appearance at the Farm was Paul Bolton in the Rorstan Brabham, while Chris Irwin took over from Piers Courage as number 2 BRM man. Harvey got a new 1860cc engine for his Brabham, and was out to do some giant-killing. Cusack withdrew his Lotus from the rest of the series, having an interested buyer, while West Australian Don O'Sullivan scratched after failing to qualify the ex-Patterson Cooper-Climax, as at Lakeside. The 1.5's were Cook, Scott, McEwin, Mike Champion (Brabham-Ford) and Jack Hunnam (Elfin Mono Ford).

Stewart went straight onto new Dunlops, and set a shattering 1:30.8 in the unofficial Friday practice, well under Clark's two-year old record of 1:33.7. The Brabhams were still in trouble with the fuel injection system, and were not happy with the Goodyears, because they did not have wide enough rims to take the good 15 inch rubber and the wear rate on 13's was alarming.

The first official session on the Saturday started with a bang when Leo Geoghegan's front wheel unscrewed itself on the way down to Creek Corner and the Lotus coasted to an unharmed stop as the wheel and tyre bounced into the trees. Brabham had done another overnight engine change, and Firestone had fitted out Martin with their only spare set of R125 rubber. Bartlett and Harvey both used new compound Dunlops, but not the 007 type, which was available only in 15 inch size. Graham Hill spent a lot of time sorting out the handling of his new car.

The first session ended with Stewart the fastest on 1:31.1, then Clark 1:31.8, Hill a staggering 1:32.1, Hulme 1:32.8, Brabham 1:33.2, Martin 1:33.4, Irwin 1:33.6, Geoghegan 1:34.1, Harvey 1:34.3, Bartlett 1:35.4, Gardner 1:36.1, Bolton 1:37.2, Cook 1:39.6, Scott 1:39.8, McEwin 1:40.7, and Champion 1:50.1. Harvey was particularly impressive, while Bolton was troubled with clutch slip, oil leaks, and sorting suspensions.

In the second session Stewart equaled his 1:30.8 from Friday in the coolest possible manner, while Clark could not better 1:31.6 before he broke a roll bar, which he at first put down to trouble in the limited slip differential. Hill came down to 1:31.7 before breaking the crown wheel and pinion in the small HD4 Hewland gearbox. The Howard brothers loaned him a replacement for the race. Brabham finally climbed down to 1:32.4, Geoghegan to a tremendous 1:32.7, Gardner 1:33.2, Harvey 1:33.7, Bartlett 1:33.8, Irwin slower at 1:33.8, Hulme slower at 1:34.6, Bolton a commendable 1:35.0 and the 1.5 litre times greatly unchanged. Thus the Sunday 3-2-3 grid saw seven cars at or under the lap record, including one 1.6 litre and one 1.9 litre engine.

Brabham and Hulme had been at Oran Park, just a bit further down the road from Warwick Farm, all the Sunday morning trying to sort out their injection and handling worries , but they lost one serious rival on the warm-up lap when Harvey's Brabham chewed out a half-shaft."
( as per sergent.com.au. 1967 Tasman Series)


(Ken Hyndman )

Thank you Ken, that confirms what I thought. Donn Anderson's report in Motorman (or possibly Peter Bakalor's report in Autosport) was way more complete than the Australian magazines had to offer. That rundown gives more information that we didn't have before than all the information we did have!