Pete's Notebook

Student of Speed that I strive to be, I’ve had the luck to log innumerable laps of track instruction alongside many superb wheelmen. Bob Bondurant, Danny McKeever, Jacques Couture, David Murry, Al Unser Sr., Parnelli Jones, Peter Gregg…I’ve learned much by revealing my ineptitude to people fully qualified to criticize me.

But the toughest passenger I’ve had is Hurley Haywood.

The man brooks no fault. See, unlike commercial schoolmasters, who tend toward tolerance, Hurley wastes no concern on nurturing repeat business. He works for Porsche, a hard bunch anyway, and feels no need for soft soap. Drive around with Mr. Haywood and you hear precisely what he thinks of your driving.

HH has the credentials, for sure. Think of all those wins at Daytona, Sebring, Le Mans. I think of Road Atlanta and riding as his passenger in a race-prepped Nissan 300ZX. “I’ve never driven one of these,” he remarked cheerfully as we blasted away from the pits. By Turn 5 he was its master.

I’ll admit our scholastic relationship got off on the wrong foot. The first time I strapped in to his left, some years ago in a 996-type 911 at Willow Springs, out of habit I used our warm-up lap through the long, long Turn 2 to see what this model did if I lifted the throttle.

You’d think I’d kicked his dog.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING???” he inquired conversationally. “YOU NEVER, EVER DO THAT!!!” he offered helpfully.

Sensing there was no point in attempting to explain myself, I shut up and planted my foot. Driven like that it was quite a nice car. Hurley kept on muttering, but didn’t actually yell at me again.

Next time we met over a gear lever was at California Speedway’s infield course in Fontana. I’d never so much as seen a map of the lap, and the car was an evilly-glinting new Carrera GT. Priced at $440,000. Packing 605 hp.

“BE CAREFUL!!!” were his first words of counsel.

That outburst was provoked by my getting on the gas in the wrong place. Even 302.5 hp was too much, and the silvery serpent let us know it. Viciously.

A couple of corners later, the Haywood hand appeared atop the steering wheel and yanked us onto the correct line.

We proceeded on around our five allotted laps. Long laps. He might have spoken gently to me once or twice more, I don’t know, my brain was all froze up.

The good news was, Porsche’s program for the day paired us up five more times in five more cars. A great day of driving great machines under the guidance of one of the greatest, most accomplished drivers in the history of sports car racing.

I kept fancying he hid a wince every time he recognized me sliding in beside him.

Tough love does work. Like a horse under the lash, I knew I had to step up. I tried to raise my line-learning pace, tighten my apexes, widen my perceptions. During our second five-lap session, in a 997 Coupe, I think, a third fist only appeared under my nose once, and I only detected a couple of angry shouts.

By my third run, Mr. Haywood was confining his guidance to hand signals.

Our fourth car was a Boxster S (it was my favorite), and at one glorious moment, as I finished throwing us through a sequence, the corner of my eye caught a subtle nod of approval.

And all around all five laps of our very last session, Hurley’s hands remained in his lap and he didn’t utter a sound until we stopped and I was climbing out of a very fine 911 Cabriolet. Then I distinctly heard him say, “Good job.”

I wear those words like a medal on my puffed-out chest. Coming from Mr. Haywood, they carry worth.

Story and all photos © by Pete Lyons

(From a story first published in 2007 on the AutoWeek magazine website, www.autoweek.com)

FAST LINES

Bruce’s Legacy

by Pete Lyons

Bruce Leslie McLaren won the first-ever Grand Prix of the United States in 1959, but really established his life’s legacy eight years later. It was September 3, 1967, at Road America when his Can-Am team began a five-year run of dominance in the fastest kind of road racing the world had ever seen.

So strong and so solid was the foundation laid then that McLaren remains one of the greatest names in motorsports today.

Kiwis can be crusty (they’re not alone in this), but Bruce was blessed with one of the sunniest natures ever to venture north from New Zealand. Open of face, friendly of manner, self-effacing and always on the brink of a laugh, he had a gift for bringing talented and ambitious racers—not the easiest of personality types—together in a loyal, tight-knit, intensely competitive team.

McLaren also stood out for blending exceptional driving ability with his education in engineering. He was always bubbling with ideas to improve his cars, which he would then personally evaluate at speed. Yet, entirely typical of the man, he would grinningly discount himself in both areas. Bruce showed no reluctance to hire drivers even faster than he was, and when discussing new concepts with his designers and fabricators he’d say, “Make it simple enough even I can understand it!”

The simple, sturdy, eminently pragmatic racing cars his company turned out reflected Bruce’s own straightforward approach to life.

Born in August 1937, the son of an Auckland garage owner, McLaren started competing with his own small Austin car at 16. By 20 he was driving Cooper racing cars, and in 1958 won his enthusiastic nation’s annual driver-to-Europe scholarship program. Cooper gave him a Formula 2 ride, and he did so well that in 1959 they moved him up to F1 to partner Jack Brabham.

That was Black Jack’s first championship season, of course, but at the British GP young Bruce set fastest lap and finished third. Then, at Sebring in the inaugural U.S. Grand Prix right at the end of the year, McLaren was holding second when Brabham ran out of gas. Presto, the 22-year-old rookie was a winner.

That early success in America seems to have set a path for McLaren, as he went on to be a major player in professional sports car racing in both the U.S. and Canada. While still at Cooper, on the side he become a constructor in his own right. With a small group of buddies, including Americans Tyler Alexander and Teddy Mayer, he further modified a former Cooper F1 chassis that Roger Penske had turned into a sports racer (the “Zerex Special”) by installing Oldsmobile’s aluminum V8.

Dubbed the “Jolly Green Giant,” this unabashed hot rod promptly won its first race at Mosport in 1964—Bruce beating the likes of Jim Hall in a Chaparral and A.J. Foyt in a Scarab.

That fall McLaren finished his first all-McLaren sports car, the M1A. This and successors earned good money in North America and elsewhere through early 1966, but when the big-bucks Canadian-American Challenge Cup series launched in September of that year, Bruce felt personally humiliated to find himself left behind by Chaparral and Lola.

Determined to step up its program for 1967, McLaren’s team designed an all-new car, the M6. It featured a stiff monocoque chassis rather than the tube frames used earlier, a high-downforce body reflecting Bruce’s experience with the Ford GT40 program (he co-drove to a Le Mans win in 1966), and stout small-block Chevy engines featuring fuel injection, then a novelty, tuned by another American, Gary Knutson.

But McLaren knew design is one thing, development another; aided by BRM running late on the engines he wanted to use in F1, Bruce spent months fine-tuning his sports car. As his new team mate, fellow Kiwi Denny Hulme, later commented, “We got those cars perfect, so when we came racing, we were ready to go racing. We weren’t ready to go testing.”

Turned out in a bold caramel color, the two McLarens sparkled at the head of the long Road America grid. Bruce won pole with a lap ten seconds better than any previous time there. An oil leak stopped him in the race, but Denny effortlessly took over, winning at an average speed higher than the previous single-lap record.

So began the Can-Am’s “Bruce and Denny Show.” The Kiwis went on to win five of that year’s six races, and McLaren himself became the 1967 series Champion. Hulme took the title the next year and McLaren repeated in 1969—a year with 11 races, of which Bruce or Denny won every one.

Ten days before the 1970 Can-Am was to start, Bruce McLaren died in a testing accident. The tragedy only seemed to toughen his team, with Bruce’s good friend Dan Gurney stepping in to win the first two races and Hulme finishing the year with another championship. In 1971 another American, Peter Revson, earned McLaren’s fifth title in a row.

The strong little team Bruce built managed two more victories in 1972 against the well-funded might of Penske’s turbocharged Porsches. Then Teddy Mayer had to face financial reality and pull out of the Can-Am. But if you know your F1 and Indycar history, you know the rest of the Bruce McLaren legacy. It’s one of the brightest in all of auto racing.

(From Pete’s monthly “Fast Lines” column in Vintage Racecar magazine, published September 2007. For more photos of Bruce McLaren, see the “People” section of our Gallery. )