KIWIS AT SNETTERTON

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31041, 22 April 1966, Page 9

KIWIS AT SNETTERTON

'THE next time the immigraA tion man at London Airport asks me why I am coming into England and how long I will stay, I’m going to tell him that I’ve come to enlist in Denny Hulme’s Kiwi army, at present massing for an attack on British motor racing. At least that’s what Chris Amon and I thought at Snetterton in the sports car race on Good Friday, and if we had been in any doubt about who would be marching at the head of our pardde, we only had to strain our eyes to see Denny in the white Lola-Chewy way out in front. Denny was on top form and so was his car. The Lola was immaculate and never missed a beat. -We started with one dry sump engine and finished with two! Chris was nursing sinking oil pressure for the last half of the second heat, but kept going to make the flag if he possibly could He finished second and pulled straight on to the grass. The oil pressure gauge had just signed off.

bruce McLaren.

Mine had stopped halfway through the second heat while I was in second place. There’s nothing more infuriating than to be pressing on in a handy placing when something mechanical pulls you up. When the oil pressure suddenly disappears it could be that the gauge has gone phut and you could keep going, but if you can visualise the colossal bill that you’d get if the engine quit on the next lap, you always come straight into the pits! EXPERIMENTAL My car was an experimental model. We were trying smaller 13-inch wheels for the first time, but we never really had a chance to evaluate these

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in practice as an engine mounting broke and we had to load up and head back to Coinbrook for an overnight repair job. Chris was in the McLaren Elva I raced in America last autumn, and he managed second fastest time, o.2sec slower than Graham Hill in the Team Surtees Lola, Denny was third quickest and made up the front row, while I sat watching operations from the second line. When the flag dropped I made a flyer, but with a wall of heavy machinery in front of you there isn’t much you can do except make a tentative effort to get through. I was up along Chris as we headed into the first curve, but Denny was already out in front, Graham took second with Chris hot on his heel's and I was still sorting out my car in fourth slot. This didn’t take too long, but by the time I had decided I was ready to have a crack at somebody, there wasn’t anybody within range! Chris had got the better of the dice with Graham to take second place behind Denny, and when Graham’s gearbox broke I found myself at the tail-end of a Kiwi trio a comfortable lap ahead of the field. Between the 70-mile heats we checked each car thoroughly. > My rear brakes had been overheating and the rear end of the car was getting a bit warm generally, so we rigged a pair of ducts. The front row for the second heat looked impressive with Denny on pole, Chris and then me. A Lola and two McLarens. And that’s the way it finished except that John Coundley took third in his McLaren, while I watched proceedings from the pit counter.

Back at the workshop we had a note from Wally Willmott, one of our men in California working on our Formula One Ford engine. We had broken a valve during testing at Riverside and his description of what followed was quite graphic. “We had decided to try dropping our valves somewhere else so we set up a cylinder head in one of Mr Nairn’s (an engineering shop next door to Traco) big machines and coupled it up with oil pumps, splash shields and loving care. The first test ran for five minutes at 10.500 revs, broke a valve spring, just about deafened all in Mr Nairn’s shop and started to eat up his big machine.

“The last two items didn’t appeal to Mr Nairn’s sense of humour so we had to revise our test rig somewhat. The gobbling of the machine was fixed quite easily but the noise factor meant we could only run at night after everyone had gone home. The final result was that in the next four days and nights that followed we worked from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Trace's then from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m. at Nairn Machine Company. In these four days alone I saw more broken valve springs and learnt more new words, rude and technical, than I had picked up in the last five years.

“The final outcome is that we now have a valve spring set-up that lasts for one hour and a quarter at 10,500 revs. This doesn’t sound like very long but it is 10,500 revs, that kills the springs, and when you think of the number of times and the period that an engine reaches or holds these revs, even at Rheims, it isn’t too bad.”