Motor Racing Heroes The Stories of 100 Greats Ascari, Alberto

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1 Ascari, Alberto ALBERTO ASCARI AND HIS works Lancia D50 plunged into Monte Carlo harbour at 120mph after missing the chicane in the 1955 Grand Prix of Monaco. Even as the ex-world Champion struggled to free himself from the cockpit of the sinking red car, frogmen were ready to dive in and haul him to safety. They dragged him to the surface and unceremoniously heaved him into their small rescue boat, shaken, gasping for breath and incredulous but glad to be alive. Before being rushed to hospital, he insisted that the divers returned to the depths and extract his lucky blue helmet from the sunken Lancia. A morbidly superstitious man, Ascari always refused to drive a racing car without his indispensible headgear. Soaked, badly shaken and with a severely bruised back, he still had to have it with him as he bobbed about in the little boat although many would doubt the helmet s powers after such an episode. That sky blue helmet spelt peace of mind to Alberto, who first sat in the cockpit of a racing car when he was six years old, on his dad Antonio s lap in an Alfa Romeo P2 at the 1924 Grand Prix of France. That peace of mind and his brilliance had paid off handsomely until the Monte Carlo dunking, by which time 37-year-old Alberto had won much more than his father: two world titles in Ferrari 500 F2s, 18 Grands Prix 13 of them world title events, including a record run of nine successive championship GP wins the Kilometres of the Nürburgring in a Ferrari 375 MM and the 1954 Mille Miglia driving a Lancia D24. Alberto moped around his Milan apartment for a few days after his frightening Monaco accident. On the Thursday, four days after his watery plunge, his friend and pupil Eugenio Castellotti invited him to nearby Monza to watch the young ascending star test a Ferrari 750 Sport to help take Ascari s mind off the Monaco debacle. 32

2 Clark, Jim IT S THE SAME WITH the assassination of President John F Kennedy and the horrors of 9/11. I know exactly where I was and what I was doing on 7 April 1968, when Jim Clark, who we all thought to be invulnerable, was killed in a Lotus 48 in a minor F2 race at Hockenheim. I was enjoying a late lunch with friends at our home in Folkestone, England. When the news came through, I like the rest of the world was stunned. My appetite evaporated. Our happy lunch party turned into numbed silence. There was no point in continuing, so, with a few sombre farewells, our friends drove back to London. Our day, our lives, had been momentarily shattered by the loss of this unassuming, quietly spoken, hyper-talented Scot. A man who had won the 1963 and 1965 Formula 1 World Championships, proved unbeatable in 25 championship Grands Prix, won another 19 non-title GPs, the Indianapolis 500 and three Tasman Cups. Jim made his mark with his usual style Down Under, when he and his F1 mates used to escape the snow and ice of Europe s winter to do the Tasman Cup series. He won the series, organised jointly by the Australian and New Zealand motor sport authorities, in 1965, 1967 and 1968, a record never bettered, although it was equalled in the 1970s by New Zealander Graham McRae. Clark won Levin, Wigram, Teretonga Park and Warwick Farm for Colin Chapman in 1965 at the wheel of a Lotus 32B-Climax, though he could only manage the Australian Grand Prix at Warwick Farm in But he was king of the series again in 1967 with wins at Levin, Wigram and Teretonga Park again, plus Lakeside. Another four victories snared Clark his third Tasman Cup in 1968, just over a month before his tragic death, with fine victories in the legendary Lotus 49 T-Ford Cosworth DFV at Wigram, Surfers Paradise, Warwick Farm and the Australian GP at Sandown. 112

3 Hill, Damon DAMON GRAHAM DEVEREUX HILL is the only son of a Formula 1 World Champion to have also won the title. His father Graham won the 1962 and 1968 championships and Damon the But never has a World Champion s biography been more aptly entitled than Damon s From Zero to Hero. After Graham s death in a 1975 flying accident, the Hill family were left in a difficult financial situation, so when Damon started work it wasn t amid the glamour of the motor racing business but as a builder s labourer and, later, a motorcycle courier, to pay his way through school. Born in 1960, the young Hill first competed on motorbikes and showed promise, but his mother Bette was worried about him racing on two wheels so she convinced Damon to take a racing car course in 1983, when the future World Champion showed above average aptitude, according to his tutors. He didn t compete much in 1984 but set out along the time-honoured beginners route of the British Formula Ford Championship in 1985, when he won no fewer than six races in a Manadient Racing Van Diemen. After an on-off disappointment with West Surrey Racing in the 1986 British Formula 3 Championship, Hill decided to go it alone and finance his own motor sport. He borrowed 100,000 and eventually got a ride with Murray Taylor Racing, for which he put in a solid series of performances. He won once in both 1987 and 1988 for Intersport, to finish third in the championship. Various stabs at Formula 3000 followed, with victories in 1989 for Footwork in a Mooncraft-Mugen Honda, Middlebridge Racing in its Lola T90/50-Ford Cosworth in 1990, and Jordan in its Lola T91/50-Ford Cosworth in 1991; and in 1989 Damon had his first go at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a Richard Lloyd Racing Porsche L Turbo Flat 6, which dropped out with engine trouble after 228 laps. 180

4 Senna, Ayrton TWENTY YEARS AFTER HIS death, Ayrton Senna is more active than ever. Through his foundation, which he and his sister Viviane discussed before his tragic death in the Grand Prix of San Marino at Imola, Italy, on 1 May To date the project has raised upwards of $80 million towards schemes to help underprivileged children develop the skills and opportunities they need to achieve their full potential. A long way from the man whose war with McLaren teammate Alain Prost made the Frenchman leave for Ferrari at the end of And the man who had no qualms about driving Prost s Ferrari off the track in the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix to win the year s Formula 1 World Championship. And the man who unwisely lambasted FISA president Jean-Marie Balestre because he felt he had been wronged, but had to withdraw his unflattering remarks for fear of not being licensed to race in Senna s career was packed with controversy, but he was a brilliant driver who won the 1988, 1990 and 1991 Formula 1 World Championships, 41 Grands Prix and took 65 pole positions, a record until one Michael Schumacher broke it a decade later. It all started with a homemade 1hp kart powered by a lawnmower engine built by his father. Ayrton was 13 when he started in his first kart race from pole, of course and won the 1977 South American Kart Championship. In 1981 he left for the UK, where he joined Van Diemen and won two British Formula Ford 1600 championships. After that he announced his retirement and went back to Brazil to join his father s business until he was offered a Formula Ford 2000 drive, so he went back to the UK and won the British and European FF 2000 titles. In 1983 Ayrton won the British F3 Championship with West Surrey Racing, then the Macau F3 event in November for Theodore Racing. 318

5 Villeneuve, Jacques Villeneuve, Jacques THIS SELF-CONFIDENT CANADIAN IS one of the elite. Only he, Mario Andretti and Emerson Fittipaldi have won motor racing s grand slam: the CART Championship, the Indianapolis 500 and the Formula 1 World Championship. A son of the art, you might say, because his dad Gilles Villeneuve was a sort of reincarnation of Tazio Nuvolari to Enzo Ferrari, and came within an ace of winning the F1 world title himself. Jacques wrested his World Championship from another son of the art, Graham Hill s son Damon, at the end of Jacques was born in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, Canada, on 9 April 1971 to Gilles and his wife Joann, but grew up in Monaco, which his parents had made their home. Gilles, a star Ferrari driver, was tragically killed qualifying for the 1982 Grand Prix of Belgium when his son was just 11. Like many recent F1 stars, the young Villeneuve began in karts and showed so much promise that his Uncle Jacques, the 1983 Can-Am champion, enrolled the lad in the Jim Russell Racing Driver School in Quebec, from which he qualified with honours. But at 17 and showing all that promise he was still too young to qualify for a racing driver s licence in Canada or Italy, so he qualified for one in Andorra. Still 17, Villeneuve cut his teeth on the Alfa Cup and came tenth, mixing it with Formula 1 pros like Riccardo Patrese and Mauro Baldi. Then he tried the 1989 Italian Formula 3 Championship, and after that the Japanese F3 series in 1992 and won three races. That led to the Trois Riviéres Formula Atlantic in Canada and a third place in the series, followed by the North American Toyota Atlantic championship for the following season, where he scored seven pole positions and won five races in 15 events to come third in the title table. 357