FIRST AT RIVERSIDE

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31831, 8 November 1968, Page 9

FIRST AT RIVERSIDE

<By BRUCE MCLAREN? J LIKED the way the "Los Angeles Times” described our chances of winning the race at Riverside. It said: “The favourite? Why not the little fellow who won the race last year, and the pole position this time—Bruce McLaren?" We went to Riverside early, to make sure that we were ready. We had intended to test tyres on the Wednesday before the race but Goodyear were confident that they had a good compound. While I. had been back in England working on next year’s design, Gary Knutson and the three others that comprise our engine division had been finding some more horsepower from our 7-litre Chevrolet engines. X' MORE POWER In June on the development engine we had more than 600 horsepower but during the series we had had one or two problems and lost some of that. When I got back to California the encouraging news was that we now had a power curve the best part of 30 horsepower higher than anything we had had before. Top speed on the straight was higher than last year, and according to our gear ratios and tyre sizes we were doing 190 miles an hour. There was no official practice on Thursday so I ran my car for only a few laps. Last year Dan Gurney qualified fastest at Imin 39.35ec and since we have bad an average improvement of about 3 per cent on lap times on most circuits we expected a similar improvement this time, but it did not happen. As it turned out my fastest lap, which was good enough for pole position, was only Imin 38.5 sec. After practice I was reasonably confident I could lap fairly fast without trying too hard, the engine was strong and the brakes were showing no signs of fade. From 190 m.p.h. at the end of the

straight we could pull down to 100 m.p.h. to enter Riverside’s famous horseshoe turn in a little more than 200 yards. Apart from the engine bothers earlier In the series we had only two other little problems with the car and they were both associated with the rear hubs. There was a tendency for a thrust race to loosen but we had taken care of that by flying new castings out from England. The other problem was a bearing sleeve that tended to shift, and the night before the race we decided to make a permanent repair by pinning them. So for the first time, as far as I was con•cerned, we went into a race with no real feeling anything could go wrong. We’d made first and second on the grid again, and as the flag fell I beat Denny Hulme to the first corner, and then decided to run just as hard as I could. The car felt just great. After about 10 laps I had ssec on Denny and he was a similar distance ahead of Jim Hall’s Chaparral. After 20 laps it had opened up to lOsec, and a further lOsec to Hall with Mark Donohue running behind him in Roger Penske’s McLaren. The middie-range power of our 7-litre engines made passing the slower traffic comparatively easy. We now had a

performance edge on everyone in the race—even Jim Hall. I enjoyed it. I was surprised when they hung out a signal saying “30 laps to go.” There’s nothing like trying hard to make a race go quickly. It was so uneventful it was ridiculous.

The only thing that really worried me was whether I would run out of iced tea! We had a quart vacuum flask of tea packed with ice in the cockpit. It was set up with a breather system and a pipe taped on to the shoulder strap of my seat harness so all I needed to do for a refreshing drink was to hook the end of the hose around and suck.

HULME SPINS The only drama came when Denny got involved with some slower cars and spun across the inside of a corner, which unfortunately had the halftyre markers which are a treacherous feature of some American tracks. This completely wiped out the right front corner of the body. Denny had been lying a comfortable 15sec behind, and if he had finished second it would almost certainly have won the Can-Am championship for him. But a couple of pitstops to repair the damage, and the slow laps from then on with the torn fibreglass flapping, dropped him back to fifth.

Jim Hall had pitted to mend a broken brake line which moved Mark Donohue up to second place, about 50sec behind me. During the last 10 laps I crossed my fingers and eased off.

All the gauges said everything was okay but when you are sitting out in front with the chequered flag and $20,000 waiting, you start to hear all sorts of strange noises. But that big aluminium Chewy thundered on, and I won Riverside for the second year in succession to be the only driver to win the race twice.

As the Can-Am Championship points now stand, Denny leads with 26 points and Donohue and I are tied at 23 points each. I guess really we just ought to run carefully as Las Vegas and try to place both cars, which would mean that either Denny or I (or both of us jointly) would win. But that’s going to be hard—it’s a lot more fun—when you know the car can do it—just to run as hard as you can go!