International Trophy - Silverstone May 15 1965

THE May meeting at Silverstone looked like being good for our team, because we had been very encouraged after a day's private practice when 1 got my Formula 1 car round in well under 1 minute 33 seconds. This was during tyre testing, and it seemed to me that both car and tyres were in top form. Satisfied with things, we didn't do too much to the cars, nut put them away for the official practice.

But motor racing rarely seems to run according to plan, for our troubles started during the first practice session. Though I Managed second fastest time of the session, my engine-which felt the best I have ever had ­blew all its water out, due to a split seal in the cylinder head.

Denny Hulme's car, which hadn't had the advantage of the earlier practice, never even started up properly from the word go. I was completely mystified how an engine could come from Climax after running quite satisfactorily on the brake, and then would only run on seven cylinders when it was fitted in the chassis. Denny practised the car in the first session, but ;t was obvious that all was not right, and the trouble was found to be a faulty injection nozzle, which we knew we couldn't fix in a hurry So that first day didn't really produce much of a return for the team.

It looked as though we had two engine changes to make. The quickest way was :o get the third car running. Denny's car was pushed aside and we started to prepare Dan Gurney's with another engine so that Denny would have a reasonable chance in his first Formula 1 drive for the team. My engine was taken out after practice and rushed up to the Climax factory at Coventry. They worked on it ^-here until about one the following morning, and we got it back down at our racing shop in the early hours. This meant putting on a second shift of mechanics to get it back into ,he chassis. They worked like blacks, and we just managed to scramble the car to Silverstone in time for the final practice period. The outcome was that I found myself stuck in the middle of the second row of the grid, and believe me there doesn't seem much of a gap to get through from that position!

Despite this grid position, the race started well and by the end of the first lap I had got up to third, behind Surtees and Hill. On the second lap I managed to get past Surtees, and then tailed Graham after wearing down the gap. After a few laps I had a bit of a juggle and got past the BRM into the lead at Stowe, but Graham was able to retake the lead again before Club. But once I did get properly in front on lap eight I was able to draw away fairly comfortably. The engine was running beauti­fully, and the car was handling as well as I had ever known a car round Silverstone. The only blight on the proceedings was that I noticed it was becoming more and more difficult to get into top gear.

Though Graham later dropped out, thus relieving the pressure, 1 wasn't feeling too happy in my cockpit. I had noticed the occasio­nal puff of smoke in my rear-vision mirror, and couldn't think what it was, though I knew something was going wrong with the gearbox because of the way the gear lever was acting. Later on, of course, the car started to give out a real smoke cloud, but for some reason 1 didn't spot this when it happened; I must have been busy lapping some of the traffic at the time.

What happened was that a pinion bearing had collapsed, and the gearbox split, leaking oil on to the exhausts. Eventually the gearbox collapsed completely, and as the box split down the side it deposited its remaining oil all over Surtees, who was just behind when it happened! He can't have been too pleased.

Until this incident, which ended in flames (quickly put out), I hadn't seen much of the race. The view from first place had seemed pretty good, though Denny had gone out with a broken oil seal in the back on his engine. There was nothing mechanically wrong with Denny's engine, apart from this, but it was blowing so much smoke and no-one knew where it was coming from, so it was wise to pull the car in, in case some serious damage might result.

From what I saw of his driving, Jackie Stewart gave a very neat and tidy performance, and it was encouraging to see a new boy taking the chequered flag. There's no doubt that in Stewart the BRM team have a tremen­dous acquisition, as we were to learn shortly after at Monaco.