#chris amon

“Only one race left with March — then it will be Brabham! “

(Early/mid October, London, England)

”There was a big group that sat in the plane. We flew with a Jumbo-jet from Ireland to get to the USA's Grand Prix.

It was almost like back in the day when us racing guys went in one plane to the races.

Now it is not that often we meet on the planes, most of us have different destinations and travel times, one is testing tires, one is traveling to Can-Am, a third to Formula 2.. But now we sat there all together and it was actually quite nice to hang out with everyone, team-bosses, drivers and mechanics in a way that rarely happens. It’s usually just work in the pits or one or two pricegiving-parties.

We arrived at 12 in the night to New York. By then I had been up and going for 36 hours in total and everything felt quite weird with the time change and all that.

There was not a lot of racing the first days in New York. But I played some golf instead and the fact is that it is starting to go really well since I started this summer. The first time I hit a golf ball was in liaison with my show-off drive at Anderstorp. Since then I have played several more times and I am starting to get quite decent at it. Either way the balls are going farther and farther, the holes in the ground are getting smaller and smaller… Maybe this will be my sport when I retire from racing sometime in the future?

How a V8 becomes a V7

So then it was time for practice for the USA Grand Prix, the last of this season. I did not go many laps during the first session. It said “bang” behind me and then I sat there with a seven cylinder engine. A valve had jumped off and cozied down deep inside the cylinder.

It was a bit of a shame, because I had a completely new engine that Chris Amon's engine factory had made for me. Chris is nowadays allied to March. And this motor was supposed to give 20 more horsepower so of course I wanted to try it. But with 7 cylinders you do not get far.

Well — there was a reserve engine and we put that in. The mechanics were working so they were polished with sweat. They were finished when there was 45 minutes left of the practice session. This happened the Friday before the race and since there was rain promised for Saturday everyone had tried to get good times during the Friday. Which meant everyone had good times — except me.

But anyways now I had 45 minutes to get a good time. Pete (unfortunately I have not been able to find his full name), my chief-mechanic, gave me the green light. I rolled out of the pits. I did not get further than to the long straight. It said “bang” behind me and there I sat with a seven cylinder motor again. That soon became a six cylinder one. V6 in all its glory but when you have 8 healthy cylinders from the beginning you really want to keep them.

When I entered the pits again it turned out that the old motor had apparently left some parts up in the “air box” — also known as the box that sits on top of the intake manifold. In other words the big air intake. The scrap had probably fallen down when I started driving. And thus messed up the motor. Now we only had one motor left, but that was a tired old stove that there was barely any use in using it.

But my old pal John Young..

I walked around and (an old swedish saying that I have no clue how to translate but he was quite irritated and dejected). Just scrapped around and generally wondering about my existence. Then I meet a certain Mr Tyrrell (Robert Kenneth “Ken” Tyrrell, owner of the Formula 1 racing team Tyrrell from 1970 to 1997) who wonders why I am looking so gloomy.

Now it is hard to think about Ken Tyrrell as a fairy godmother, at least when you see him. He is probably not the most fairy-like person in the racing world. But somewhere inside him a good heart beats. Because Ken says:

“Borrow an engine from Jackie. I will fix it. “

And of course he managed to fix an engine since he was the team chief for John (Jackie) Young Stewart, a twice world champion. So then I actually had something to drive with during Saturdays practice sessions. But the weather forecast had kept its word for once.

It rained. First out on track with dry tires, but that did not work. The track was occasionally wet, occasionally dry. We were struggling with the tires constantly. And in the end I slid off during a tyre-test where I had combined old and new tires. A back wheel flew off when I danced into the fence.

Poor Pete and the rest of the guys in the mechanics gang. They had to work almost all night. But the car was finished in time. And during Sunday I had half an hour to set it up for the track. We adjusted the shock-absorber and the anti-roll bar, then the car drove smoothly.

It has never been that good any time before. Which was proven by my position. I had no practice-time so I had to start second last. But I finished fourth when the race was over. I do not really want to brag, but that was probably one of the best races of all time for me. Everything fit so nicely, the car worked well and it was really fun to drive.

Now we are going to Brazil..

I should have driven F2 at Vallelunga but there was no race. That means that I will drive my last race on March Sunday the 22nd of October. But that does not mean the season is over for me.

I will go to Brazil to drive for Brabham. A few days back I signed a contract with Rondel Racing to drive four races in Brazil. It is going to be really exciting since they have 8 1960-cubic engines, two for each car. It is going to be me, Tim Schenken, Henri Pescarolo and Bob Wollek who will be driving.

It is really going to be nice to get away for a while and drive in South America. You always learn something from a new team and in this way I will not have time to get rusty behind the wheel before I am going to start driving for John Player Special.

My next report will be from the other side of the globe.”

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You can find the original chronicle (in Swedish) not through a link but in this picture I found:

(I unfortunately cannot find the facebook post I ‘took’ the picture from though.)

Let me just say that I love Ronnie’s way of writing. It is quite personal and I hope it comes across like that in English too, his chronicles feel more like letters than chronicles. He’s quite funny in his own way too.

First he insults his future team-chief twice and almost in the same sentence says how grateful he is for the engine that he got. Also the fact that he just got an engine from a rivaling team?? Well, March was quite low in the team standings at that point but still! I wonder if Stewart found out that Ronnie got one of his engines?

Well I had a good laugh from this chronicle, both from the insults and Ronnies bad luck. “V6 in all its glory but when you have 8 healthy cylinders from the beginning you really want to keep them” — he knows what’s up🤣! I also reacted a little to the fact that he calls Jackie Stewart John Young. From what I’ve read/heard not a lot of people did that.

And for the last time for probably forever (unfortunately):