| WHAT IS it like to drive a Grand Prix car? Except for the drivers
themselves, the opportunities of road-testing one are virtually non-existent because, with a starting price of somewhere between £15,000
and £20,000, there are no such things as Presscars. With his first-hand experience as a Grand Prix driver, however, Innes Ireland has
succeeded in borrowing a car or two, and this drive - in a Cooper-Maserati -
is the first of what we hope will be a series.
A FEW weeks ago I got out of bed a little earlier than usual and
did something that I haven't done for a long time - I looked out of the
window and peered anxiously up at the sky. My heart sank to my boots
(bare feet actually) for it was raining; in my anxiety to convince
myself that it was an optical illusion, I glanced down at the patio and
the goldfish pond below my bedroom window‑but there were the shiny
wet paving stones, and rain splashes all over the surface of the little
pool.
This
wasn't the normal concern whether or not I would wear a raincoat, it was
something that took me back to the first days when I raced a car. I
always hated racing in the wet, and on this particular day I had to go
down to Goodwood to drive the formula 1 Cooper-Maserati. Even though I
was not racing the car, my feelings about the rain were just as strong.
As
I threaded my way out of London, down that old familiar road to Goodwood,
the rain eased off; by the time I crossed the last ridge of the Sussex
Downs it had stopped altogether. For once I arrived at a circuit before
the transporter, and this gave more time for the track to dry-out.
Racing
cars differ from their bread-and-butter sisters in that you don't just
get in, start up and drive off. They have to be warmed‑up
carefully, cheeks made on the oil circulation; and when the temperatures
have reached a certain level, they are switched off for the oil levels
to be checked. This checking period allowed me to sit in the cockpit and
get to know the different gauges and switches.
I
was not surprised to find, as I eased myself down into the narrow
confines of the monocoque chassis, that it all felt very familiar. The
chassis part of the Cooper-Maserati was designed and built by Tony
Robinson, the man who was responsible for the formula 1 BRP cars which I
used to race.
Although
the driving position is very much more reclined than in an ordinary car,
it is not so extreme as some contemporary racing cars. By any standards
the seat padding is scant indeed, but in a car of this type where one
has complete support all the way down to below the knees, it is
surprisingly comfortable. The side pads, which hug the body to just
below the shoulders, give immense support which helps to make one feel a
part of the car.
The
pedals are just the same as in any ordinary car, with the clutch on the
left, brake in the middle and the throttle on the right. They are,
however, grouped very close together, and there is no room at the side
to relax the clutch foot. The heels are supported by a little plate
which also acts as a bracing point to hold one firm in the seat.
The
gear lever is a very short, stumpy little switch which emerges from the
monocoque hull on the right‑hand side, just level with the
steering wheel and very close to it. This is one of the factors which
allows those very quick gear changes with an absolute minimum of
movement. It also ensures that one-handed steering time is cut to a
minimum.
The
instruments are grouped together in the centre of the dash panel with
the rev counter taking the predominant place in the middle. This
instrument is not placed symmetrically but is twisted anti-clockwise so
that the maximum rev limit for the engine occurs when the needle is
vertical, and requires no more than a glance to spot this critical
point. There is a second needle in the instrument which records the
maximum revs that the engine has attained - and this is always the first
thing a team manager looks at when you come in after a practice session!
The
other gauges record the water and oil temperatures, and the pressures of
the fuel supply and the oil. At the sides of the panel are various
switches, one of them being the master-switch which isolates the
battery. At finger-tip distance from the steering wheel are the ignition
and fuel pump switches, where they can be reached instantly at the first
sign of any trouble. The starter button is slightly to the left and
above these, and on the extreme left is a simple pull-on control which
operates an auxiliary Bendix pump, used to prime the engine-driven
mechanical pump for starting up only.
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With
the engine warmed-up and the various checks made, I was now free to do a
few quiet laps to warm-up the transmission, and familiarise myself with
the controls. I engaged first gear by moving the lever to the left of
the gate and back and, with the revs at 3,000, moved off from the pits.
There are five forward gears, and as I moved the lever forward to the
neutral position it sprang over to the centre of the gate, so that all I
had to do was push it straight forward into second. Third was a simple
straight back movement, fourth a gentle pressure to the right and
forward, and fifth straight back into the right-rear corner of the gate.
It
became obvious immediately that the car was geared for a very high-speed
circuit and was not at all suited to fast laps round Goodwood. This made
it rather difficult to know what gear I was in, since the movement
across the gate was very small and my automatic judgment of speed to
gearbox bore no resemblance to reality.
There
was quite a lot of cockpit drill to be remembered with the Cooper that
was not common to other Grand Prix cars. First of all I had to switch
off the priming pump once I was under way; and at a later stage, when
using more revs, I had to switch off the main electrical fuel pump to
allow the mechanical engine pump to do all the work.
I
soon got back into the swing of driving a single-seater, but because of
the very high gearing I had to use second where I would normally use
third; and on the straight, where I should have been getting 9,800 rpm
in fifth, I could get only 8,200 in fourth. Directional stability was
excellent, and I could take my hands off the wheel on the straight
parts.
The
brakes, which are Girling discs, responded to quite a light pressure,
but as the pedal pressure increased the rate of slowing up did not
increase correspondingly. In fact, it was almost impossible to lock a
wheel. Bear in mind that a light pedal pressure in a racing car is about
the same as you would use in a family saloon when the lights go yellow
and you don't think you would quite
make it before the red - pretty heavy, in fact.
Cornering at speeds only slightly slower than those when racing produces
a wonderful feeling of complete and utter safety‑there is no roll,
no oversteer, no understeer and no slipping and sliding - just complete
adhesion. But when I started to press on a bit, I felt again the
delicacy of control and balance that is the Grand Prix car.
The
Cooper doesn't roll much even under these conditions, but the rigidity
of the monocoque construction imposes fairly heavy side forces which are
readily felt - my body being pushed to one side or the other. On fast
corners, in the 135 mph region, the response to the wheel was immediate
and the car went exactly where it was pointed. The only thing to
remember is that you start pointing it before you get there, so to
speak.
Slow
corners were a different matter, and I found that the car wanted to
understeer quite severely. To overcome this I either entered the corner
too slowly, or what was much more fun, too fast, so that I threw the car
at the apex and overcame the understeer by applying enough power to
break the back-end away. This required some correction by using a little
opposite lock, but the attitude of drift could be maintained very easily
without any fear of losing control.
To
be fair to the car, I was using a gear which was much too high for the
corner and this situation always causes an unstable condition.
Reading the Instruments
The two gauges at the bottom of the panel were a little difficult to
read on the straight, as the spokes of the steering wheel got in the
way. But I was able to glance at them on corners, and racing instruments
are - glanced at - rather than read. I soon got to know the angle the
needle should be to give the required reading on all the gauges, and so
long as they all stayed at the right angle all was well - it's only when
they get to the wrong angle that you take a close look.
Having
completed about 20 laps, and remembering that the new owners of the car
were present, I reluctantly decided to call it a day. But before I did
so, I stopped the car in front of the pits to do a standing start.
Without being surrounded by other cars with their engines screaming and
a little man to drop the National flag, I found it almost impossible.
I
then gave myself a count-down and, with 6,500 rpm on the clock in the
middle, started to feel the take-up point of the clutch. As it started
to grip I increased the pressure on the throttle pedal to keep the revs
steady, which produced a minimum of wheelspin until the clutch was right
in. At about 7,500 rpm there was no wheelspin at all, and in a moment
the needle was at 8,500, the limit I had set myself lest Autocar
found themselves paying for a Maserati engine. With the slightest
dip of the clutch pedal I slid the lever across the gate into second and
then it was possible to sink the accelerator right to the floor and it
was all go, up through the gears.
My
final fling was on the straight when I produced maximum braking; and,
while I changed down through the box with those delightful little blips
on the throttle which come in such rapid succession, the car came to
rest in a remarkably short distance. As I trickled slowly back to the
pits, with the exhaust burbling quietly at low revs, I realized-as with
the stopping distance from 145 mph - that it was over all too soon.
There
are few things on a Grand Prix car one can compare with those that are
driven on the roads. But perhaps a few figures will be of interest. The
maximum permitted revs are 9,800-10,000; normal oil pressure is 80 psi
with a temperature of 100-110 deg. C ; water temperature is 90 deg.C and
the fuel pressure is 140 psi.
The
car that I drove was the winner of the 1966 Mexican Grand Prix with
Surtees at the helm, and it won also the first Grand Prix of the 1967
season when Rodriguez had his first drive for Cooper.
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