In 1963, three Willment-run cars were taken to South Africa for the South African season—a Lotus Cortina, a Ford Galaxie and the Cobra GT I am running at the Goodwood Revival in 2004!
There were several drivers and we used to just switch drivers and switch races. I drew the “short straw” at East London and got the Cobra for that race. I won the race but I remember that the car that finished 2nd was an MGA, and I was quite a long way in front of it—I sort of drove with my elbow out the window. At least when I come to drive it again at Goodwood, I can remember it very well. That was the only race I did with that car, which remained in South Africa. Bobby Olthoff owned it and did a number of races with it.
That was at the early end of my Cobra driving experience. In 1964, I was very focussed on the Lotus Cortina and the European Touring Car Championship, but in 1965 there was the really big push by Ford to try and win the Manufacturer’s Championship for Sports Cars from Ferrari. The idea was to win Le Mans and the Championship, so Alan Mann ran the team with the Cobra Daytona Coupe in the European races. We had a Cobra roadster as a spare car, and I drove that in one of the races because I had crashed one of the coupes at Spa and the following race was the Tourist Trophy at Oulton Park. That was two 2-hour races, with a two-hour gap in between and the aggregate time won the race.
A Cobra roadster around Oulton Park in one day was hard work. Jack Sears was in one of the Daytona coupes, but he had a problem on the first lap and lost a lap so he was never going to make the results, so it was down to me, and I won the race. That was an important part of the Championship. In my memory, it is the hardest race I ever did.
There were, of course, a number of other memorable races with the Cobras. Alan Mann was very astute because he got the idea of how to win the Championship, and that was to run the cars as slowly as possible. They are very, very solid cars, but a lot of circuits then were very rough, and if you drove them flat out, you could break many of the parts on the car. For example, the first race we did was on the banking at Monza and that banking was very rough and bumpy. We ran the two Cobras there incredibly slowly. In fact, we were running slower than the Alfas actually, but that was what had to be done to win the class, which was our objective. In several of the races we ran them anything but flat out. If you went back over the lap charts you would see just how consistently slowly we were keeping the cars, even though they were obviously capable of going much quicker. We always ran them just as fast as they needed to be run, and that is why they finished so well.
One of the interesting races in the Championship for me was the 12 Hours at Reims. After seven hours, we burned a piston because the French petrol was a slightly lower standard fuel. When we saw that the piston was gone, we put two big end caps on and pulled the piston out altogether and ran the rest of the race on seven cylinders. We still managed to finish 2nd even in that state. That was the race that made me deaf.
Jack Sears was my codriver in that race, and was my “regular” codriver in Cobras. Bob Bondurant sort of got to be the Cobra “hero” and he and Schlesser won the class at the Reims race. Bondurant was an interesting character. He was an enjoyable guy and we had a lot of fun with him, but you could say he was less of a team driver. He was out to win every race, while we didn’t see that as the purpose of what we were doing—we were focussed on winning the Championship. Jack Sears got upset with him at Enna because Jack was leading and Bob tore past. He did win the class, but we were really trying to win it by going slowly.
The other people in the team beside myself, Jack and Bob were Jo Schlesser, Allen Grant Jochen Neerspach and Frank Gardner. These were all very interesting and competent drivers, and we all got on well. That year, 1965, was interesting because I was also driving the Ford GT-40 in some races such as Le Mans where I was with Innes Ireland. Then I shared the Ford Advanced Vehicles entry at the Targa Florio, which was the GT-40 Roadster with Bob Bondurant. That car was actually pretty good but a wheel came off during the race. The nut had come undone and fell off, and the wheel knocked down a power cable for the local train. It took me ages to find the guy who had the wheel nut and talk him into giving it back so I could put the wheel back on and get back to the pits!
It is very interesting to come back to the Cobra after all these years, having retired from racing a few times! The thing I notice most is how cramped it is. My knees are up around the steering wheel and my head is banging the roof. If I could sit back in comfort, there is probably a second and a half to come. The people who make racing cars didn’t seem to think how much difference it makes to the driver to sit where you want, where you can feel the car. I can’t feel the car very well if I’m uncomfortable. They always were uncomfortable—and most racing cars were—but I have been spoiled since by more comfortable cars.
But the handling is good, it’s very controllable around Goodwood and that all comes back pretty quickly. I haven’t driven a car in anger since 1990 in the McLaren Can-Am car, so this is the first time I have had the tail hanging out in 14 years. I have been doing 1 minute, 33 seconds in practice at Goodwood, and I guess I could get down another second or two if I really wanted to, but I’m not pushing it, because that’s not what I’m at Goodwood for. The last thing I want to do is stuff somebody else’s car—but it is nice to know that it all comes back pretty easily. We did a great deal of the GT-40 testing here at Goodwood so I know my way around, though it’s not an easy circuit. I still have to think hard about the faster parts of the circuit, which are visually harder to recall. But it’s good to be working at it!
