Tiff Needell's personal heroes of Formula 1

The debate about who the greatest F1 driver is will rage forever. But here are the heroes of a young racer who yearned to follow in their footsteps

1y ago
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Tiff Needell is a television presenter and former racing driver who competed in Formula 1, British Touring Cars and at Le Mans.

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There have been endless debates about who the greatest grand prix driver ever is. But there’s never been any conclusive agreement, simply because you really can’t compare different generations.

You could go by the most races won, but then the latest generations have driven in so many more than those from the days when you tended to retire soon after you’d reached the top, knowing that if you didn’t, you might not live long enough to enjoy it.

Michael Schumacher: not on the list

Michael Schumacher: not on the list

Michael Schumacher currently has the most wins with 91, while Juan Manuel Fangio had just 24. Yet Fangio won 41% of the races he started compared to Michael’s 30%. Of the recent candidates I have no doubt that Lewis Hamilton will be one of the most revered in years to come, but sadly I can’t support devotees of the supremely talented Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna, because both sullied their reputations by occasionally choosing to use their cars as battering rams.

Vettel, Alonso and Prost all have a good case, as does Niki Lauda, a champion who came back from close to death to win his second title, retired and then came back to win again. Jackie Stewart, John Surtees, Jack Brabham, Stirling Moss and Tazio Nuvolari all had their periods of brilliance, but really we all know this is a pointless debate because, of course, Jim Clark is the greatest driver there has ever been!

So instead of adding further to the endless argument, I thought I’d simply pick my top five heroes, men that inspired me on my path from clinging to the fences on the outside to sitting on the grid of the 1980 Belgian Grand Prix.

Mike Hawthorn

Mike Hawthorn

Mike Hawthorn

My seventh birthday came just ten days after the 1958 Moroccan Grand Prix,a race that decided which of two drivers would be the first British World Champion. I’m not really sure why I was rooting for Mike Hawthorn in the Ferrari rather than the more obvious choice of Stirling Moss in the British Vanwall.

It was an incredible year for British drivers, as they took the top five places in the final standings. These were drivers I’d watched while clinging to the fences at Goodwood and Brands Hatch as my love of the sport began. I don’t think I really had a favourite at that age, I was simply intoxicated by the sights, sounds and smells of these colourful machines being wrestled through the corners.

I guess Hawthorn, who beat Moss to the crown by a single point, caught my attention more as he came from Guildford, just down the road from where I lived. While Moss was the model professional, Hawthorn was a more extrovert character, always wearing his trademark bowtie. He had formed a glamorous partnership with his Ferrari teammate Peter Collins, with the pair sharing pints of bitter on the podium after Peter had won the 1958 British Grand Prix.

Tragically, Collins was killed at the very next Grand Prix at the Nürburgring and Hawthorn, having announced his retirement from racing, died in a road accident on the Guildford bypass just three months after claiming his crown. Two heroes were gone in the space of just six months.

Jim Clark

Jim Clark in action at the 1964 Dutch Grand Prix

Jim Clark in action at the 1964 Dutch Grand Prix

By now I’d already caught a glimpse of the greatest racing driver ever to grace the circuits of the world – Jim Clark. Before 1958 was over, the Needell family had made the annual trip to the traditional Boxing Day Brands Hatch event, a day that kept me far wider awake the night before than waiting for Santa to come.

There, in a Lotus Elite that his Scottish backers had just bought, this little known Scotsman qualified third behind the two factory-entered cars on his first visit to the circuit. He then led the first eight laps of the ten lap race before getting held up lapping a back marker, allowing Lotus founder Colin Chapman to snatch the win. Clark might have been annoyed at the time, but he had caught the attention of someone who would play a huge part in his future.

Jim Clark

Jim Clark

Exactly a year later I saw him make his single-seater debut at the same meeting, in an uncompetitive Gemini Formula Junior. Three months later, at another annual pilgrimage to the Easter Monday Goodwood meetings, I witnessed his first race in a rear-engined car.

Armed with the new Lotus 18 Formula Junior he fended off the advances of John Surtees, who was making his four wheeled debut, to win a thrilling battle. For me, from that moment, Jim Clark and Lotus were bonded together for life.

The quiet, unassuming Scottish farmer could do things with cars that others could only dream of. His huge natural talent and deft touch allowed him to perform ballet on wheels and he would race everything he could. He won the World Championship in ’63 and ’65 but could easily have won it in three other years had the fragility of his Lotus not cost him vital points.

Away from Formula 1 he had a go at NASCAR, won the Indianapolis 500 and did things in a Ford Cortina on both track and rally stages that others could only dream of. He was, quite simply, the greatest driver of them all.

On 7 April 1968, I was clinging to the fence on the outside of Clearways Corner at Brands Hatch, hoping to see Clark debut the new Ford F3L sports prototype in the BOAC 500 mile race. Unfortunately contractual obligations had sent him to Hockenheim in Germany for a Formula 2 race, from which he never returned.

Jochen Rindt

Jochen Rindt

Jochen Rindt

With Clark gone, it seemed impossible to replace him with anyone else. Graham Hill was cruising to his second title – which should have been Clark’s third – in the brilliant Lotus 49 but Hill, formerly the BRM enemy, was my brother’s favourite so I couldn’t possibly follow him!

I willed Chris Amon to win the ’68 British Grand Prix, driving his scarlet Ferrari with a spaghetti of white exhaust pipes on top of its V12 engine – the best looking racing car of all time – but Jo Siffert took the last ever win for a privateer in Rob Walker’s Lotus.

There was, however, one other driver on that Brands grid that I had a growing admiration for. Jochen Rindt had burst on the scene back in 1964, a complete unknown winning the Formula Two race at Crystal Palace in his privately run Brabham, ahead of Graham Hill. The young Austrian’s exuberant driving style excited all that saw him, and over the next few years he’d chalk up 29 wins and be renowned as the ‘King of Formula 2.

Rindt at the 1970 Dutch Grand Prix

Rindt at the 1970 Dutch Grand Prix

From ’65 to ’67 he had spent three character-building seasons in Formula 1, driving uncompetitive Coopers. At Brands, as I watched, he was in a Repco-powered Brabham, heading for one of his 10 retirements from 1968’s 12 grands prix. But for 1969, he would be driving a Lotus.

Now he had the equipment to win races, but the famed fragility of the Lotus haunted him. It was the year of the high mounted rear wings and in Barcelona Jochen had led from pole position before both he and teammate Hill were lucky to survive identical, high speed crashes when their wing supports collapsed. There would be six retirements from the ten races he started but his first Grand Prix win came at the penultimate round in America.

I was fortunate to witness one of the greatest F1 races of all time, sitting in the stands on the exit of the daunting, almost flat Woodcote Corner at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix. Rindt had qualified his Lotus on pole ahead of champion-elect Jackie Stewart in his Matra-Ford, and for more than 60 laps of the 84 lap race they staged the most incredible duel, swapping the lead on almost every lap. Stewart was trademark neat and tidy while Rindt would head towards me with the rear of his Lotus way out of line, teetering on the brink of disaster. It was awesome to behold!

It couldn’t last of course, as Stewart drew alongside and made Jochen aware that his rear wing endplate was coming adrift. He had to head to the pits and would finish a frustrated fourth. But all who were there that day knew they had witnessed a future champion.

And that championship came the very next year, driving a combination of the now-four-year-old Lotus 49 – in which he pressured Jack Brabham into making a rare mistake at the very last corner to win the Monaco Grand Prix – and the futuristic Lotus 72. With a total of five wins he was way out in front in the points, but during qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix an inboard front brake shaft broke, turning him sharply left into the Monza barriers. The crash was fatal, making him the only posthumous F1 World Champion.

Emerson Fittipaldi

Emerson Fittipaldi

Emerson Fittipaldi

Before that tragic day in Italy, I’d been at Brands for the British Grand Prix where Jochen had notched up his fourth win of the year.

But most of my day was spent following the progress of another outstanding talent, making his grand prix debut in a third Lotus entry in one of the old 49s. It was the Brazilian, Emerson Fittipaldi.

Having left school the previous summer I was now a racing driver of sorts myself, spending all my savings racing Lotus 51 Formula Fords in little, four car races run at the Brands Hatch racing drivers’ school. Formula Ford had been created as a new, low-budget, entry-level single-seater formula a couple of years earlier and I dreamt day and night of joining the fray, but had no money to buy a car of my own.

Fittipaldi in the Lotus 72

Fittipaldi in the Lotus 72

Having won his home single-seater Formula Vee championship in 1968, Emerson had headed to Britain and bought a Formula Ford to race. He was a sensation from the word go. By mid-season he had been offered a F3 drive in a Lotus 59, winning nine races and taking the British Championship title.

Lotus promoted him to Formula 2 at the start of 1970 and now, just a year and a half after landing in England, he was making his Grand Prix debut at the age of 23, just five years older than me. If he could do it so could I! I just needed the money to buy a car. Little could I believe that six months later I would win a Lotus 69F Formula Ford in a magazine competition.

Emerson won his first Grand Prix just four races later, now in Jochen’s Lotus 72, and, like Jochen, won at the penultimate race of the ’70 season in America. He was World Champion two years later, the youngest ever at that time, with his Lotus now in the iconic black and gold John Player colours. He’d be World Champion again two years after that, driving for McLaren.

He may well have had more titles had he not shocked the motorsport world by leaving McLaren to drive for his brother’s Brazilian-based Copersucar-sponsored team, which was never able to produce a car worthy of his talent.

He retired from racing at the end of 1980, probably having never recovered from the shock of having to share the back row of the grid at the Belgian Grand Prix with some new kid called Tiff Needell in an Ensign. But he returned to the tracks in America in 1984 to contest the Indycar series.

Champion in 1989 and twice a winner of the Indianapolis 500, he finally quit after a leg-breaking accident in the middle of 1996, now nearing his 50th birthday after an amazing career at the top of his sport.

James Hunt

James Hunt

James Hunt

During Fittipaldi’s time there was one more driver who perhaps inspired me more than any other to continue in my quest to join the ranks of grand prix drivers. James Hunt.

He was another of my Formula Ford heroes, who I’d first spotted back at another Boxing Day Brands Hatch meeting. This time it was the 1968 event and once again it was his extravagant driving style that caught the eye as he opposite-locked his way to third place.

Always running on the tightest of budgets, James promoted himself to Formula 3 the next year, driving a two-year-old car faster than it really should have gone. He finished third behind yet another Fittipaldi victory at one Brands event.

Hunt in the Hesketh

Hunt in the Hesketh

Always trying to make an uncompetitive car do things it shouldn’t, his early career was inevitably littered with accidents and the nickname ‘Hunt the Shunt’ was deservedly earned. A bout of fisticuffs at Crystal Palace kept his name in the headlines.

For 1971 Hunt got the competitive Formula 3 car he needed, and the wins soon started to mount up. And 19-year-old Tiff Needell was there to witness some of them, as I’d now joined the ranks of real racing drivers, towing my prize Lotus 69F around the country with a very tatty Ford Anglia van. Surely where Hunt can go Needell can follow?

By the middle of 1972 though, Hunt’s career looked in tatters. Having shunted his factory March Formula 3 car in Monaco, he’d fallen out with the team and was out of a drive. Without the arrival of the eccentric Lord Hesketh, the motor racing world would possibly have never heard from him again.

Hesketh financed some drives in a year-old March Formula 2 car and Hunt turned in a sensational drive at the Oulton Park Gold Cup meeting that year, chasing the factory March’s of Ronnie Peterson and Niki Lauda all the way to the finish, even with the handicap of a rear wing that had begun to collapse.

Once again, I was at the fence being inspired by this great underdog performance, with my Lotus waiting in the paddock for a support race later in the day. Unfortunately, while James went home a hero, I went home with a bent Lotus and a broken arm.

The rest of course is history. Hunt was a grand prix winner in Hesketh’s own Formula 1 car in 1975 and a World Champion the following year for McLaren. But it wasn’t just the race results that made him stand out. The flamboyant lifestyle of this very British hero was all part and parcel of why I wanted to be a racing driver. I wanted the world travel, the ‘wine women and song’, and James did all of that to the maximum.

The week after clinching that title in 1976 James Hunt presented an award to that year’s most promising young British driver in a televised London ceremony (pictured below). Tiff Needell was about to become a retired civil engineer turned professional racing driver.

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Comments (23)

  • I guess it's kind of rude to debate a F1 opinion with someone as Tiff, so I'll just comment that the simple domination of the sport goes to Senna and Schummi. I don't really care what were they ramming, when u see the brilliance and uberskilled driving and determination.

      1 year ago
  • Hunt and Hesketh for me...for obvious reasons but also what a life! Racin, shaggin, drinkin, n smokin his way round the F1 circus 🏁🏁🏁

      1 year ago
  • 1)Jim Clark

    2)Juan Manuel Fangio

    3) Michael Schumacher

    4)Ayrton Senna

    5)Niki Lauda

    6)Emerson Fittipaldi

    7)James Hunt

    8)Lewis Hamilton

    9)Sebastian Vetel

    10)Kimi Raikonen and Mika Häkkinen

      1 year ago
  • Stirling Moss was considered by many as one of the greatest although he never won a F1 championship

      1 year ago
  • My emotional hero is Gunnar Nilsson, both for who he was and what be could have been. I pay him visit as often as I can, in my hometown...

      1 year ago
23