Dutch G.P. In The Wet

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31729, 12 July 1968, Page 9

Dutch G.P. In The Wet

(Btl BRUCE MCLAREN) T DON’T suppose we can really complain too much about the weather at Zandvoort for the Dutch Grand Prix. After all, in the six GJ*.s we’ve had this year, the Dutch is the first to be run tn the rain. Actually it was a bad week all round at Zandvoort—not that Ken Tyrrell or Jackie Stewart would have said that, mind you, after Jackie had driven away from the field for a well-deserved win—but for a seaside resort in the height of summer the cold wind and grey sky wasn’t

really what we had been looking forward to. 1 like Zandvoort. I like the town and I like the track. It’s two minutes drive from the town, the hotels are good, there is an excellent garage where we can work on the cars, the facilities at the track are great, and the Dutch race officials are a friendly bunch. UNLUCKY RECORD But with my record at Zandvoort, I should hate the place. I think it all probably stems from the first time I was supposed to race there in 1959, but the organisers had

never heard of Bruce McLaren or they didn’t have enough money left over, so I ended up flying from England and just watching the race. I seem to have been condemned to watch most of the Dutch G.P.s since then.

This year we certainly tried as hard as we could. We went to Zandvoort straight after the Belgian G.P. to test for a day and a half. It says something of the competitive state of G.P. racing these days that 8.R.M., Tyrrell with the Matra, and Honda had all been to the circuit for development work and tyre testing before the race, so that the official practice sessions before the G.P. were, in a way, just a formality. But of course the people who hadn’t been near the track—Ferraris and Brabhams—ended up fastest in practice. That’s justice for you.

PRACTICE We had been in good shape in that first session with Denny comfortably fastest, and I was equal second fastest with Graham Hill’s LotusFord, and Chris Amon’s Ferrari. But that seemed to be as quick as Denny and I could go. Both Graham and Chris found another second and when the Brabhams came out to play, they turned out to be extremely fast as well.

They had been having so much bad luck with their new engines that I couldn’t help but have a sneaking hope that perhaps they hadn’t had time to get their cars working properly. After the final practice on Saturday there were about eight cars with just one second covering from Chris Amon’s pole position with the Ferrari down to eighth place on the grid, which was occupied by B. L. McLaren. Sometimes a second doesn’t matter, but at Zandvoort we might as well have been half an hour slower. Denny was beside me on the third row of the grid with Jacky Ickx's Ferrari. SUBDUED

Breakfast on Sunday morning was very quiet and subdued. It was raining, and raining hard. There had been a spot of rain on Saturday to give us a taste of what it might be like in the race, and I don’t think anyone enjoyed it. But there were no deep puddles and if you were go-

ing to slide off the track, it was basically going to be a question of driver-error — rather than aquaplaning off on a pool of water. As it turned out in the race, either the standard of skill was fairly low, or too many people were trying too hard, or maybe it was just because the conditions changed so quickly.. Cutting a long and slippery story short, while Stewart and Beltoise were charging off into the lead on their excellent rain tyres, the rest of us seemed to be either spinning off or banging into things. While the rain was still falling the track wasn’t all that bad but when the rain stopped it became extremely greasy.

LOCKED WHEELS I arrived at the end of the pit straight after 20 laps, put the brakes on, and the front wheels locked on. If the car didn’t actually accelerate when that happened, it certainly didn’t seem to slow down appreciably. I let the brakes off a couple of times and then squeezed them back on to try and get turned, but there wasn’t a chance. All I could do in the brief fraction of a second was to pick the softest bit of dune and safety fence and alm for them! I ducked well down in the cockpit and waited until everything had stopped flying through the air. It didn’t do much damage to the car but it put me out of the race and I felt pretty bad about it for a while. It seemed a stupid thing to do, but then I started watching the antics of the others. About 10 of them either slid straight off, spun, or careered sideways into the fence. A couple of them did it more than once, and if I'd been able to go back out I would probably have done it again myself.

THREE SPINS Beltoise, who was making remarkable progress in second place chasing Stewart, actually spun three times, one of them most spectacularly—a long slide completely sideways, throwing sand in all directions. The wear in cylinder bores must have been really high that day with the amount of sand and rain that was sucked in.

Jackie didn’t put a foot wrong all through the race and must have been the only driver who didn’t lose it at some stage.