Up the Hill to Formula One

I guess I have done most types of motorsport at one time or another…trials, sprints, rallies, hill-climbs and races. I won the British Hill-Climb Champion­ship three times running in the 1950s, and that was the first time that anyone had achieved that particular feat. That was with an ex-Peter Collins Cooper-JAP Mk.VIII. During that period, I had started to run a Manx-tail Cooper on the race circuits, and then John Cooper got me into one of the first Formula Two Coopers. So, I was doing the hill-climbs and F2 at the same time. Having won the three Championships on the hills, I then began to concentrate on circuit racing, but only part-time. I had some quite good results in F2, in 1957, at Brands Hatch, Montlhéry, Mallory Park and at Reims.

It got to a point where F2 regulations and engine size rules changed, so we put a rollover bar into the car and a starter battery, and we found ourselves able to do Formula One races, but it really began by accident. We didn’t do it by design. I was in a couple of Grand Prix races including the German Grand Prix where they were running a Formula Two section. I finished 4th in F2 at the Ring. I then did quite well that season at Silverstone which was another F1 race with an F2 class, and at Oulton Park. These were all in the Cooper T43.