Going Full Circle

The 2005 Walter Hayes Trophy meeting at Silverstone took me full circle back to Formula Ford, the formula I started my racing career in. I was working for (Sir) Frank Williams—he head-hunted me to join him as a mechanic—and I built my own Formula Ford car from a wrecked Formula 3 Brabham chassis. I raced that car for two seasons, 1968 and 1969. At the time, Frank was buying wrecked Formula 3 chassis from the continent, and we would strip the cars back to the chassis and rebuild them, using brand-new parts, and sell them for less than two-thirds of the cost of a new one. It was the era when you could simply update a car for several years. I shared a flat with Frank and we worked from a “lock-up” garage at the back, much to the detriment of the people who shared the block, in Pinner, Middlesex. We moved, after a while, to a proper lease-hold property in Slough. Things were starting to look up a bit from then on.

With a little support from Frank (although I was still doing the engineering work) I competed in two Formula Ford Championships in 1969, which was a little silly. I came 2nd in both championships, because I had to miss rounds in both events. I felt I was learning the best way and trying to progress through the junior ranks as soon as possible. I only missed one championship by half a point. Fellow competitors at that time would be Emerson Fittipaldi, James Hunt, Gerry Birrell and other good English drivers that somehow fell by the way. I feel I got known by more people doing both championships and that led to Formula 3 people looking at me. Indeed, in 1970, I gave up working and raced full-time. Frank really wanted me to stay with him, he said we would be “going places.” When you look back now, he was starting to build the empire, which is now very evident.