Everyone is intimidated by a shark. Become a Card Shark AMERICASCARDROOM.COM
Now, can we... Whoa, hold it. They're still lighting.
Right. Stand by.
Gordon, would you talk, and, um, Bruce, if you could just nod.
Yeah.
This is the story of a young man from New Zealand who was so successful
at driving cars that he came to Europe to branch out as a professional driver.
As a designer, and as a businessman, last year McLaren exported racing cars
worth one and a quarter million dollars.
Bruce McLaren driving in his 100th Grand Prix at the age of only 32.
Bruce storms back to make it a sensational McLaren one-two.
McLaren seems to choose any line
in a daring drive rarely seen in motor racing.
McLaren crew chief Tyler Alexander looks happy, wouldn't you say?
Bruce, you're competing on the world's motor racing circuits,
and beating people who've got far, far more money to spend than you have.
Would you be much better if you had four or five times as much money to spend?
No. We'd probably get in a terrible mess.
You can get too big as a racing team,
and you could get involved and hidebound.
You've got to be able to move quickly if you're going to be competitive.
But the actual care with which pieces are put together is very important.
Something done incorrectly or assembled in a hurry can be very dangerous.
When I was a boy, Mum remembers hearing me telling a fantail:
"When I grow up I'm gonna be a racing car driver."
We're gonna talk about... We're gonna talk about Bruce,
the human interest side of it, really. Yeah, which I think is a good idea.
You know what it's like when you meet somebody and there's an instant rapport.
He was a very hands-on person,
learning about the mechanics of cars at his pop's service station in Remuera.
We learned how to repair cars, put cars together, build things, make things.
We were always together. His friendship was simply unconditional.
His sense of humor was never far behind him. It was like a shadow.
Motor racing was what we lived for.
Bruce's father had a pretty extensive career in motorsport himself,
from the 1930s.
Wives and friends signal drivers
how far they've gone and their position.
Some keen spectators follow the race in the same way,
whilst others just watch the cars go by,
and wonder why on earth people would want to do this sort of thing.
Pop McLaren obviously wanted Bruce to follow in his footsteps,
and Bruce absolutely loved it.
It was always in his mind from the time he was a boy.
And yet he must have been in severe discomfort
most of the time, strapped to that frame.
Bruce had an illness from childhood, which had left him crippled.
We called him the Crippled Kid.
We thought he had polio.
All types of cripples from all over New Zealand
comprise the 73 patients at the Wilson Home for Crippled Children
at Takapuna, Auckland.
At nine and a half I contracted Perthes Disease.
The ball joint in my left hip was breaking down.
To immobilize the hip, they strapped me to a frame
and dangled weights from my legs.
A specialist said I'd be laid up for several months.
He lay on that frame for two years,
never came off it.
Was educated on it, and washed and fed on it, and the whole lot.
One leg was always shorter than the other.
And he limped badly,
and couldn't play rugby or cricket like other kids.
- Can you hit anything? - Sometimes.
Your piece, yeah.
And shoot.
Damn it.
Can I move?
Move? What the hell you mean, move?
I'm better when I move.
During these formative years,
Pop could see Bruce's extraordinary natural ability.
And he'd give us little lessons about lines through corners
and things to observe.
It was Les that always said that when Bruce beats his times,
he becomes the driver.
New Zealand didn't have that many sporting events in those days,
and people would drive anywhere to watch guys hurtling around.
We did a lot of races together,
all over the North Island and South Island.
And then when the Grand Prix, the New Zealand International Grand Prix,
started, that became an extraordinary event.
I mean, there were 70,000 people there on the first day.
The New Zealand Grand Prix was an opportunity
for Bruce to race against the best drivers in the world.
People like Jim Clark, Jack Brabham, and Stirling Moss.
These guys were the Spitfire pilots of the 50s and 60s.
The pin-up boys.
In New Zealand racing drivers are regarded with a special sort of awe.
And if they happen to be overseas drivers,
the awe develops into hero worship.
That's how I regarded Jack Brabham.
Jack Brabham kept his race car at Pop's service station,
so he became a friend of the family, and Bruce's mentor.
Bruce was an extremely good driver and he had the talent that was born in him.
Motor racing's not something you just suddenly learn out of the blue.
You've got to have it inside, and you've got to have a feel for it,
and Bruce certainly had all that.
The New Zealand International Grand Prix introduced a scholarship
to get a New Zealand driver to compete internationally.
Well, tonight's winner, he started racing as a 15-year-old.
This year alone he's won six out of six sports car races,
driving the ex-Jack Brabham Bobtail Cooper.
The winner is Bruce McLaren.
Now, Bruce, this award allows you to go to England,
where you will train and race with the Cooper Car Company.
Bruce was 20 years old.
Mr and Mrs McLaren said,
"Would you go with Bruce as a mechanic/helper?"
I said, "But I'm not a mechanic."
You know, I worked in an automotive parts warehouse for my dad.
Bruce said, "You'll learn."
Backing us up was Jack Brabham.
What I was able to do was to have it teed up for him
to come to the Cooper Team.
This is where we build our racing cars
and there are hundreds of component parts that go to building a racing car.
John Cooper said, "There's your car over there."
And he looked over, and it was a pile of pipes and a rack.
That's your car there, boy. Now you better start building it.
And he had to set about with Colin Beanland to build the car
before he could race it.
And Bruce started his Formula 2 career.
Dear Dad, I wish you could be over here
doing this motor racing with me.
I reckon I've inherited something from you.
It's the ability to have a go when the time is right.
Bruce started getting some good placements in races,
which helped the budget. And he liked the money that he won.
Bruce was an incredibly prolific letter writer.
And the boys would record tapes to send back home.
Thanks, Pop, by the way, for that extra cash you sent over.
Fortunately, I don't think I'll need it. The way I'm looking at this season
is to get in as many races this year as possible, and do well.
I'm looking forward to Nürburgring very much.
It's a very tough course, and if I can finish there,
I'll be very happy.
It was a combined Formula 1 and 2 race. Bruce in Formula 2.
The Nürburgring was the most dangerous circuit on the calendar.
They called it The Green Hell. Torturous, very, very dangerous...
There were several sections where, if you were brave enough,
you'd go over the top of a hump and you were flying.
So many different corners, so many different type of corners,
you know, up a hill, down a hill, off camber, with camber,
jump twice, four wheels in the air.
It was a challenge to any driver.
It doesn't matter how much you knew Nürburgring,
every lap there was a new challenge.
Bruce was sort of unknown at that time. A new kid.
And he was actually leading the Formula 2 section.
As the race progressed,
he got into some of the Formula 1 cars, and passed them too.
He finished fifth overall. Won the Formula 2 section of it.
As he drove up, back to the pit,
he had a grin on his face that was obviously like a mile wide.
He was just absolutely elated.
I helped him out of the car and,
you know, I think there were tears in both our eyes.
That was really the thing that turned the tide.
It got international recognition. He became on the contenders' list.
# Happy birthday to you
Bruce turned 21 during that year. He was still in England,
but there was a great 21st birthday party at his parents' house.
# Twenty-one today, twenty-one today
Well, hello, son.
I hope you've had a wonderful day, and as Phil said,
we just hope you don't think we're all under the influence of liquor.
We both got homesick, but the driving force behind the whole thing
was the enthusiasm we had for what we were doing.
- Over to Dad. - Hello, Bruce.
Once again, very many happy returns of the day.
I mean, people would love to have done what we did.
The Auckland Car Club used to hold regular club nights.
Pop would take the tape recordings.
At Goodwood,
the biggest sort-out between the professional drivers
and the chaps just starting is the fast corners.
On these fast corners, you go round them the first few times,
you think, "Ooh dear, that was near the limit,"
but in actual fact it's not. It's only time and confidence that enables you
to get round the fast corners quick.
The rain was starting to pour,
and the whole banking was absolutely treacherous.
We were taking this banking at about 140 mile an hour.
Under the extreme G loading, you have to hang on to the wheel fairly tight
to stop your hands being pulled down on to the floor of the car.
I think it frightens everybody.
1959 was Bruce's first full season in Formula 1.
Towards the end of the year Coopers were major contenders
for the World Championship.
It certainly looks as though the last Grand Prix of the season,
at Sebring, could be the deciding race.
Jack had a very narrow lead over Stirling Moss.
Brabham has got the race in his hands.
Supported by teammate McLaren, nobody can touch him now.
The race and the World Championship are his, but now the order has changed.
It's McLaren, number nine, who takes the checkered flag.
Bruce won.
And team manager John Cooper welcomes his winner home.
My best friend had now won his first Grand Prix.
Bruce was now the youngest driver ever,
at just over 22 years of age, to win a Grand Prix.
And Jack had won the World Championship.
What are they going to say in Australia when they hear this? Or New Zealand?
I don't know about Australia, but I think they'll be pleased in New Zealand.
It was a new world for Bruce because now he's recognized.
I remember Bruce saying, "I think we're becoming famous."
It was an understatement when you consider
what went on for the rest of the year.
Bruce won the opening round of the 1960 World Championship in Argentina.
And on the plane ride back to England, Jack, Bruce and John Cooper
came up with a car that went on to sweep all before it.
Cooper cars have swept the board and won the constructors' prize.
And Bruce, in his second year with Cooper,
finished second to Jack in the World Championship.
Bruce McLaren was the first New Zealander
to really get into Formula 1 and establish the fact that a Kiwi
could go and do it, and actually make that breakthrough on the world stage.
He was an important figure to all Kiwis.
Bruce came back home every year for the race season.
One of Bruce's heartfelt ambitions was to win the Grand Prix in his hometown.
For many years motor racing has been
a popular sport in New Zealand,
attracting drivers with a taste for thrills,
and mechanics with a taste for tinkering.
There are car clubs all over the country,
and though prize money is not large,
there's nothing small about the amount spent on vehicles.
For the big money, and the big names in motor racing,
we fly north to Auckland, our largest city.
Here in January each year is run the New Zealand International Grand Prix.
In the summertime, there was a lot of things to attract
Northern Hemisphere drivers down to New Zealand.
There was not much happening in the northern winter in those days.
New Zealand was a perfect place to come and take up some sunshine,
waterskiing, girls.
Enjoying the summer weather with friends are Grand Prix drivers,
some of whom have come halfway round the world for the big race.
An expert water-skier,
Arnold Glass is trying to explain the sport to the English drivers.
At least one of the Englishmen has other interests in mind,
and Arnold's only pupil is New Zealander Bruce McLaren.
After his wobbly efforts,
Bruce decides to stick to car racing. He says it's safer.
In New Zealand, Bruce met a girl from Timaru.
I certainly remember when Bruce first met Patty,
and she'd become Miss Caroline Bay.
We met at a dance, from memory.
And then I tootled home with my girlfriend,
and Bruce said he wanted to meet me again.
And he was only there for a couple of days,
and then off he tootled, and kept in touch.
I was 18.
So I always said we had a courtship by letter.
Before we got engaged, we'd seen each other about six times.
I always liked people with brown eyes and dark hair.
He could have been a few inches taller.
Often we would be invited to Bruce's for dinner,
sometime in the company of people that weren't motor racing people.
And the whole conversation would finish off with pencils and pieces of paper.
Bruce at heart was an engineer.
He would make models out of balsa wood and stick and strings,
and do torsion tests on the kitchen table.
And he would come in the next morning
and show us what he'd drawn and what he'd built.
Bruce and Jack talked about life after Cooper.
Here we had effectively a perfect storm.
The two drivers in the team, not just fantastic drivers
but both capable of engineering and designing a winning racing car.
Jack Brabham left the Cooper team at the end of 1961,
and started construction of his own cars.
The engineer in Bruce must have thought,
"That's something which I really need to do one day."
- How did you go, Bruce? - That was pretty good that time, John.
I think a bit too much braking on the back, but otherwise nearly perfect.
Monte Carlo was just magical.
They used to have the film festival the week before,
so all the stars would stay over.
It was tremendous. And we used to travel in convoy
with the various other drivers, and we'd stop off in some little motel.
But we had great fun, you know, travelling around together.
In those days, all the drivers were friends with each other,
but they were very determined competitors.
Bruce was now the number one driver at Coopers.
There was an awful lot of pressure.
All the leading drivers were there.
Jimmy Clark and Graham Hill. On the front row of the grid was Bruce.
Five, four, three, two, one. Drive!
Graham Hill. Ooh, look at that.
That was Willy Mairesse with the Ferrari.
This was Monaco.
Any driver that can finish at Monaco in my book's a hero.
It was a real endurance event.
Two and three-quarter hours,
2,700 gear changes, hard on the brakes, and hard on the steering.
Bruce was in the lead, followed by Phil Hill in a Ferrari.
Phil Hill was closing on Bruce, and chasing him down.
And everybody in the Cooper pit got terribly nervous.
Up on to the straight for the last time,
and Bruce McLaren
wins the 20th Monte Carlo Grand Prix by two seconds.
Everybody was absolutely ecstatic,
John Cooper more probably than anyone else.
As Bruce said to me later, he said, "Phil Hill may have caught up with me,
but there was no way he was gonna get past me. No way."
Coopers have been really brightened up by the Monaco result.
And I don't have to tell you, folks, Patty had a ball meeting royalty.
Grace and Rainier had a cocktail party. I was fixated by the emeralds.
The necklace, the earrings, the bracelet, the ring.
And it was just fabulous.
Bruce McLaren by then was a jet-set person.
World-renowned, youngest Grand Prix winner of all time at that time.
Bruce McLaren, Jim Clark, Innes Ireland, racing aces now...
Bruce was a superstar.
We had great fun, you know, travelling around together.
Time...
Our life is time, and heartbeats are seconds.
Whatever we do, our preoccupation with time is constant.
Speed doesn't exist for a top racing driver.
Your mind completely synchronizes
with the elements you're competing against,
and one of those elements is speed.
There's an element of danger but Bruce was such a careful person.
But sadly, motor racing has its share of tragedies.
Over the years, Bruce saw a number of his friends killed.
You're dealing with human beings,
cars that are put together by human beings, so they can break.
Human beings driving them, so they can make mistakes.
Drivers know that sort of thing's on any time they get into a car, really.
It may sound callous, but if you're going to keep racing,
to think on an accident is bad.
It's best to try and forget as soon as possible.
Everything is in slow motion,
you've got plenty of time to brake,
you've got plenty of time to change direction.
Speed only happens when you're having an accident.
At Nürburgring he had an accident, a high-speed accident.
Bruce said he only remembers waking up in hospital.
I'd once promised myself I'd give up motor racing if I had a major crash.
But I found myself thinking, "Not yet." And I'd like to start something big.
Run my own outfit.
Bruce was preparing for the future.
Bruce was a great student in that university which was Coopers.
He had a voracious appetite for information.
That burning curiosity and intelligence. He had the ability to think big.
When Jack Brabham left, it became very obvious
that Coopers didn't want drivers being involved in design,
or in the drawing of it. And that's where Bruce's passion lay.
Bruce, as an engineer,
could see that Coopers' best days were behind them.
This was the start of his plan to get his own full team together.
Jack said, "It's difficult, but if you want to do it, go for it."
I think the first thing I did for Bruce, apart from...
I mean, I painted him several times, of course, winning races.
But he asked me to design a badge
for the then embryo McLaren Racing Team.
This tatty old ledger came to light recently.
I've got an entry here: "Designing badge for Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Limited.
For use on racing cars, transporters, letterheads, lapel badges.
Thirty-nine pounds."
And he said, "Yeah, can you design a badge that is relevant
to a New Zealand team?"
He was very proud of his heritage, and New Zealand.
OK, Kiwi, racing car, the name of the team, a badge.
Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Team.
Bruce McLaren Motor Racing was first formed to race in New Zealand.
In the Cooper workshop in England, Bruce and I had built a car
specially to win the New Zealand Grand Prix, from the ground up.
The car was, for all intents and purposes, a McLaren car,
but because he was still contracted to and driving for Cooper,
then it made sense to call it a Cooper.
But it was really Bruce's deal.
Cooper copied our car, and built a second car for Timmy Mayer.
Timmy Mayer was a young American driver, Bruce's teammate,
and to some extent, protégé.
Timmy was a very approachable young fellow.
He'd done very well in England in Formula Junior.
With his brother, Teddy, as his team manager.
It was the New Zealand Grand Prix. This was what we were here for.
Away goes the field of crack drivers
on their high-speedjourney of 150 miles.
Lap after lap with fingers crossed.
And to win in a car that Bruce and I had designed
and built ourselves was just tremendous.
Lots of hugs all round, it was a huge effort.
But, as you learn in motor racing, the highs and lows were enormous.
In practice at Longford, the last race of the series,
Timmy talked to Bruce about a hump in the road just prior to a corner,
because Timmy felt that he was braking before it,
and could possibly brake after it.
And Bruce said, "Yes, you can brake after it, but be very, very careful."
Timmy went out and never came back.
The vehicle landed a little sideways into a tree.
The car was virtually broken in two behind the cockpit,
and, you know, it just killed him instantly.
It was really our first tragedy.
This was the first time that it struck so close to home.
When you speak to somebody minutes before
and they're no longer with you, it affects you quite deeply.
But there was a race the next day.
And the team turned up...
and we raced the next day.
They'd seriously talked about Bruce not racing,
but decided that, you know, we must carry on.
This is our business, this is what we do.
At Timmy's funeral, the eulogy Bruce wrote
really was the mantra that the team followed from then on.
The news that he'd died instantly was a terrible shock to all of us.
But who's to say that he had not seen more, done more,
and learned more in his 26 years than many people do in a lifetime.
To do something well is so worthwhile
that to die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy.
It would be a waste of life to do nothing with one's ability.
I feel that life is measured in achievement, not in years alone.
At the end of that Tasman series, we went back to England,
not quite sure what the future was going to hold.
Eoin Young called me up and said,
"Bruce is here. He wants to talk to you."
Bruce came on the line and said,
"I'm expanding my team, would you like to work for me?"
He wanted to hire more Kiwis.
"Yes, please. Thank you very much. I'll do that."
New Zealand mechanics were very innovative.
They had learned how to build cars in our little country,
where it was very difficult to get parts.
And so they could make completely new components.
You know the old saying,
if you give a Kiwi a length of number eight fencing wire, he'll make anything.
So he liked that attitude, 'cause that's how he was.
Bruce McLaren now had a team but didn't have a workshop.
Our tow car had a rusty old trailer.
And Eoin Young was sent out urgently to try and find us a workshop.
In retrospect, it was terrible.
It was very small but in fact it suited us perfectly at the time.
What he came up with was the corner of a large industrial garage
that was used for servicing earth-moving machinery.
With what was virtually a dirt floor.
It probably had been concrete once,
but with all the bulldozers moving around, it was broken up.
Bruce McLaren Motor Racing in England started in a very grotty shed.
Well, that ought to do it.
Money.
It takes an awful lot of money to run a team.
Mechanics, drivers, transportation.
Bruce was up against Lotus, Maserati and, of course, Coopers and Ferrari.
There was a payroll to meet every week.
Bruce was asked to drive big American sports cars,
particularly as a test driver.
Ford used Bruce a lot, because they appreciated his technical ability.
With his engineering background, Bruce could drive the car,
and he could tell the engineers exactly what was happening.
Bruce needed the money from Ford.
There was no money in Formula 1.
The McLaren team really was being financed doing testing,
and we'd do anything up to three or four hundred miles a day.
There wasn't a lot of money at the time.
They did a lot of tire testing for Firestone, which paid good money.
Just wonderful experience.
So I knew Bruce quite well by the time I started working for him.
These were guys, none of them had hit 30,
and they were full of enthusiasm, full of innovations, and they were smart.
We all spoke his language, we all shared his humor,
and we were all totally dedicated to him.
He worked along with us. He didn't stand there and issue instructions.
He would be there with his sleeves rolled up.
I think now the cars like the big GT cars,
which we drive at Le Mans, Nürburgring and so on,
they'll do 200 mile an hour, and they also accelerate like mad,
spin the wheels, you can't keep full throttle all the time,
and this is a lot more fun.
Bruce decided sports car racing might be the way to go
for the fledgling McLaren team.
He'd heard of a car that was for sale in America, called a Zerex Special.
Teddy Mayer was back in America, with his life in tatters
because of the death of his brother, Timmy.
And Bruce said, "How would you like to try and buy this car for me,
and come to England?"
- We chopped the chassis up. - Put an Oldsmobile engine into it.
Big stack exhaust pipes so it looked like something from Mars.
Threw it on a plane, took it to Canada, and won at Mosport.
Bruce McLaren from Auckland, New Zealand
gets the checkered flag.
We, in Europe, were racing for peanuts,
and for us to go to America and see the sort of money
that was available was mind-blowing.
With his new team, Bruce needed management.
What about a mechanical means of taking the nuts off?
- Like Tyrell's air wrenches. - Wouldn't be a bad idea.
Teddy Mayer was a lawyer.
He became the business brains of the operation.
He took one look around the workshop and said,
"Goddamn, you can't work here."
And so Eoin Young was sent out again.
Eoin Young got us what was a really upmarket workshop in Feltham.
It was 10,000 feet, the ideal place to start up.
It had lots of windows, and a good concrete floor,
and nice work benches, and even an office.
And Bruce decided to start with a clean sheet of paper,
and we would build the first ever McLaren.
This year we decided that the car that would probably win
would be a lightweight car powered by a relatively big American engine.
The McLaren M1.
Bruce basically sketched with a piece of chalk on the floor
what we were gonna do.
It was instantaneous stuff. There was no time to draw.
The chap would come in at night and say, "What have you made today?"
"I've made a couple of wishbones here. Just draw those."
I had an office with a sign on the door that said,
"Don't knock. We don't have that sort of time."
Bruce was famous for just waving his arms and saying,
"You know, just make it like this."
Whoosh, you'd take some tubes, and bonk, you've got a chassis.
That was one of Bruce's favorite terms "Just whoosh bonk."
And of course that stuck, then everything was "whoosh bonk" after that.
But it was anything but whoosh bonk.
The day we wheeled it out of the workshop, painted black,
with a silver stripe, and a little Kiwi badge on it,
was a very, very proud moment for all us New Zealanders.
Bruce went off to America to run that car.
And you'd kind of pack up and become gypsies.
You know, you'd find space in somebody's garage, in some dealership,
whatever, to work out of.
Spare parts that had to come from England.
It was a lightweight car, very much like a formula car in Europe.
It created a huge amount of attention.
The Americans at the time were running heavy cars, incredibly heavy.
Bruce was nimble, and he could duck and dive and weave
amongst all these great big heavy monsters.
The phone started to ring, and people started to ask,
"How can we get one of these cars?"
- Boy, that car is something else. - Yeah.
Would you like to drive her?
- Mister, you got yourself a deal. - I'm glad you like the car.
Dad, we're pretty pleased the way things are going.
We could have sold 30 sports cars this year if they'd been available.
A lot easier than winning races, let me tell you.
We've got a way to go before we understand
aerodynamics on these sports cars
but I guarantee we know more than anyone else.
The big excitement has been in Formula 1,
but we're keeping that very quiet.
There at the end of the runway is Concorde 001,
and in Toulouse let's join Raymond Baxter.
Just seconds to go.
The magic moment with us, the crescendo of sound from the 593 Olympus.
Nose has come up to 20 degrees, she's airborne.
She flies.
Bruce said to me, "You know, we really need a full-time designer,"
because he was flat out all the time.
So I said, "I've got this friend called Robin Herd who works on the Concorde,
but he'd love to design racing cars."
I'd been three years out of university and I was working at Farnborough,
which is the headquarter of the British Aircraft Industry.
When Bruce says to a 25-year-old, "Come and design my first Formula 1 car,"
you either say, "Yep, I'll do that,"
and risk the biggest cock-up of all time,
or no, you throw away the opportunity of a lifetime.
Robin was aware of all these materials we didn't know anything about.
And one of the products was called mallite.
I did a sort of latest aircraft technology version of a Formula 1 car,
using honeycomb, double skin and bonding.
Bruce took it with great enthusiasm.
JAN McLAREN: The letters to Dad
were full of technical stuff. The first mallite car.
There's pictures of the tub, and little drawings of what he was doing.
Course, Dad just lapped up every word.
It was a very tedious vehicle to build.
We would be working on the car come midnight.
We would probably be working on the car all night.
When you've just been working 12 or 14 hours a day, week after week,
there's a bit of tension.
When somebody was welding and couldn't see,
we would fill a 20-cigarette packet with oxygen acetylene
mixed at exactly the right ratio.
And you just slid it until it got to the flame.
And at some point it blows up.
I mean, it scared the pants off of people.
You know, Bruce took all those things in his stride.
Bruce was always one of us. Very much one of the boys.
When he built a new car, he would get into it,
and pretend to drive it, and make engine noises, and steer it.
"Oh, boy, this is going to be quick," and then we'd go, "Yeah, yeah, yes."
Really good fun.
They built a jig to build a mallite chassis with.
There was a piece of cold-drawn steel tube, about a four-inch diameter.
And it was realized this would make a wonderful gun barrel.
We decided we'd make an acetylene, oxyacetylene cannon.
A cap was welded at the end
and then a little bolt and a spark plug fitted.
Fortunately I did a pretty good job at welding it.
Not realizing what we were doing.
Robin Herd was, yeah, an object of fun.
I don't know what we were thinking of.
There was a sense of humor to everything. They seemed to accept me.
He used to come to work at nine o'clock or something.
We would have already been at work for quite some time.
The drawing office door was at the top of the stairs.
We waited until Robin got in the office. So this gun was set up.
- Paint cans was a perfect fit. - Point it towards the door.
And it was far more successful than we expected.
It went right through the door.
He suddenly had his door flying inside.
We were all organized to stow the gun instantaneously.
So it was wang, under the bench. Everything was out of sight.
"What? Bang? Did you hear a bang?"
It was typical of the New Zealand and by then McLaren sense of humor.
6 a.m., daughter, eight pounds, brown hair.
Amanda Leigh. Both fine. Father poorly.
We've certainly been very lucky.
Little Amanda Leigh is as perfect as we could have wished for.
I'm bringing them home and picking up the nurse on Tuesday.
I don't go to Nassau until Wednesday afternoon.
He coped with it wonderfully. I think I had to do more coping.
Well, you have to, if you're going to have a successful marriage.
And whatever comes along you take in your stride.
Because he was away a lot of the time.
1966 was Bruce McLaren's first year as a Formula 1 constructor.
Bruce, above all, wanted to win in Formula 1.
To the extent that he got hold of numbers one and two,
the numbers that go on the car, for Chris and himself.
Chris Amon was going to be running the backup car.
It never happened.
I never got to do any races at all because the engine was a disaster.
Bruce put an Indianapolis Ford engine
into the back of his Formula 1 car.
It made a fantastic noise, but just had no speed at all.
Dear folks, it's been so long since I've written
I guess you must wonder what's going on.
The last few months have been a little difficult.
For the first time ever, we've had a major setback.
The F1 season is over, and we've certainly had a failure.
It's hard to keep up the spirits of the team.
The team stuck at it, as they do.
But, you know, with that engine there was no hope...
which was a real blow.
I've been feeling a bit of pain lately.
Just one question, Bruce.
The doc asked do I get headaches, and I said, "Yes."
Quite possibly due to the curve in your spine.
Due to the pelvis not being square when I stand.
Your left leg being shorter than your right.
For a more permanent solution, there's a rather radical procedure that we can do,
in which we replace the head of your femur with a steel one.
He sent me to have an X-ray,
and when I looked at them, I was a little shaken.
The right was a beaut ball and socket and the left was a tatty old thing.
Quite normal Perthes Disease recovery, he said. But it shook me a bit.
His short leg, and the pain it caused him,
to him personally, was a great problem.
It was never talked about, it was never, ever considered to be
of anybody else's concern but his, but it was his reality.
Bruce needed a lift.
This is Le Mans, home of the most famous road race in the world.
Through his contacts with Ford,
Bruce was contracted to drive at Le Mans.
McLaren had been commissioned by Ford to build a special version of the GT40.
I first met Bruce about 1966.
We were testing and developing with Ford.
We used to kid around, because he had a bit of a limp,
and he had to have the clutch pedal closer to him.
And I said, "You know what?" I said, "I keep banging my shins on that."
Stupid things, but that's what friends do.
I was in good hands with Bruce. I wanted to learn as much as I could,
because Bruce was an artist.
I loved the way he would rotate the car, and there was a finesse to that.
To be able to extract every ounce of what this machine is capable of,
a machine that...
can hurt you.
He took that GT40 from a vehicle that was dangerous at 190
to a car that was going 214 or so mile an hour, hands off.
Bruce had contributed a lot of his expertise to the program,
and Fords were pretty dominant at that time.
Le Mans was really the big objective.
Henry Ford had decided he wanted to win it and it didn't matter what it took.
There wasn't a budget constraint like we all had in Formula 1.
Bruce and I teamed up as Ford drivers.
I guess it became natural to put the two Kiwis together.
Having a chance to win Le Mans was huge.
The race always started at four o'clock in the afternoon,
and finished at four o'clock the following afternoon.
Bruce started the race,
sprinted across the track, one leg shorter than the other.
In those days, those cars, you couldn't drive them flat out for 24 hours.
But Bruce said, you know, "We've got nothing to lose.
Let's give it everything." And that's exactly what we did.
We just drove it flat out.
Headlight beams pick out the advertising signs in high relief,
and the long lonely night of endurance lies ahead.
As daylight dawned on the Sunday,
the Fords were in a very strong position.
In first place, number two, Ford.
In second place, number one, Ford.
In third place, number five, Ford.
Ford made the decision, we're first, second and third,
we'll have a dead heat.
When the decision came to slow us down,
I can remember Bruce being really annoyed.
Bruce did the last stint.
I will never know whether Bruce put his foot down, or Ken Miles backed off,
but Bruce crossed the line clearly in front.
Suddenly, you know, we're standing up on the podium with Henry Ford,
and we've won one of the most famous races that exists.
We've just won Le Mans.
# A few years back Ford savvied a need
# For a bold new breed of four-wheeled steed
# A car to stand out from the rest of the gang
# A car born to fame
# The Ford Mustang...
People on the street, they own a Ford, and Bruce was driving a Ford.
They'd say, McLaren, that's the guy that won Le Mans.
It impressed so many people.
# Mustang... 66!
It was a huge PR boost.
Bruce's entire racing operation at that time
was really aimed at the Can-Am series.
Can-Am is the Canadian-American Challenge Cup.
And that series consisted of unlimited engine,
unlimited almost everything,
so that people could be very innovative with their cars.
Well, this is Mosport. And I'm Bruce McLaren.
What do you think was your biggest break?
The creation of the Can-Am series was very good for us.
Just at the stage where we were starting to concentrate
on sports car racing,
sports car racing became a very big thing in the US.
I started as a race queen, if you will, with flags, and the jumping.
I hear those engines, and I'm, whoa.
I would go around with this camera all the time,
and I'd do the drivers' parade,
and they'd all wave at me when they go by. Like a family.
Got to meet Bruce, and became friends.
I loved the way he always said, "She'll be right, mate."
Bruce had a good team, and he was trying to
raise enough money so he could spend enough money
to stay on the cutting edge of racing car development.
McLaren's design mastery was very much in evidence.
Thirteen of his streamlined models were in the race.
The McLaren was the class of the field.
I was so envious, wishing so much
that I could just drive one of those things myself.
McLaren brand, the cars, appealed to me.
It was smooth, and they looked good. So that inspired me.
Charging up the back straight,
McLaren makes 165 miles an hour look easy.
I met Lothar, and Lothar raced a Cobra for a while.
But when he saw the McLaren...
I sold my Cobra.
I sold my house.
I bought the McLaren.
Bruce McLaren was very important to me,
and what he started with the McLaren team was tremendous.
It was a great couple of years of my life.
But I was approached to meet Mr Ferrari.
Bruce was very disappointed because I think that he was
thinking about stopping racing himself and just running the team.
Bruce, you're so busy on the construction and management side,
are you planning to retire from racing yourself,
and devote seven days a week to construction and management?
Not just yet.
I imagine that in a couple of years or so I will do this.
But at this stage it's still necessary for me to do the driving.
In '67 we spent three months
just building these Can-Am cars to go to the States.
That's all we did. We're just mad activity.
We needed to win to earn the prize money
to be able to afford to do our Formula 1 car.
I don't know how they scraped through all those years.
I guess Teddy basically put a lot of money in, in the early days.
The Formula 1 failure hit Teddy's wallet very bad.
It was one thing for the sponsors to say, "Yes, we'll stick with you,"
but they had to have a reason for sticking with us.
The McLaren team has built a completely new Can-Am car for 1967.
It's the M6A.
Bruce's new teammate, his fellow New Zealander Denis Hulme.
Where are you finding that extra speed?
I would say largely with our car, on acceleration coming out of the corners.
You don't expect any trouble in the race?
I always expect trouble, I just hope we don't have any.
At Mosport the race was gonna start.
Bruce said, "Look, we've got a problem."
New Zealander Bruce McLaren, who qualified second,
is not on the grid.
Minutes before the cars were lined up,
the McLaren mechanics discovered a leaky fuel bag,
and are feverishly working to replace it, but time is running out.
Teammate Denis Hulme will carry the McLaren banner.
Dan Gurney, in the second row, will be his major threat.
The field is off for one tour around the two-and-a-half-mile course,
without McLaren.
And then the Americans saw Bruce do something special.
McLaren is off, flat out.
To play catch-up is a tough way to go racing.
McLaren almost a lap behind as the pack gets the green flag.
Bruce McLaren is 55 seconds behind.
Denis Hulme in the number five McLaren leads Gurney
into the deceptive downhill left-hander at Turn Two.
McLaren's out of the esses
and blasts for the start/finish straight and green.
Hulme and Gurney are setting a blistering pace.
McLaren gamely pours it on,
cutting the gap between him and the tail-enders.
McLaren has caught tail-ender Nat Adams,
and signals Fred Pipin to let him by.
McLaren pulls up five places in just five laps.
McLaren seems to choose any line
in a daring drive rarely seen in motor racing.
Brett Lunger is into the guard rail, debris all over the tracks.
Gurney and the sensational Bruce McLaren
battle for second.
McLaren makes his move down the pit straight.
But Gurney shuts the door.
McLaren now in second.
McLaren crew chief Tyler Alexander looks happy,
wouldn't you say?
Hulme is in trouble. He's done serious damage to the bodywork.
McLaren narrows the gap.
Hulme struggles on, the burnt-out wheel locked in place.
Incredibly, Denny holds on to win.
Bruce storms back to make it a sensational McLaren one-two.
Every racing driver likes the opportunity now and then
to be able to come right from the back of the field.
Even though Bruce was really wanting to try and wind down,
he loved racing, he loved driving. And he was still good at it.
Bruce needed another driver in Formula 1.
Quite clearly Bruce and Denny got on very well.
They were Kiwis taking on the world.
Denny had a foot in both camps, as it were.
He was driving with Jack Brabham in Formula 1.
The Formula 1 season ends up with Denny becoming World Champion.
Bruce won the Can-Am championship, Denny was second.
And the longer we went, we got stronger together,
and Bruce decided there'd be a place for me
in his Formula 1 team, his new Formula 1 team.
- It's beautiful. - I don't like the steepness.
- I do. - I'm with you.
You've got to play up to the fans, don't you?
Our Formula 1 car was designed. The M7. Robin Herd designed the chassis.
The car was a success right from the start.
We were starting to look very good.
And then, in 1968, Bruce made history at Spa.
Spa is a very, very long race, very high speed.
Fuel consumption is absolutely critical.
Spa was a bit like Monaco.
Sometimes only three or four cars would finish.
Denny was very competitive. Second right from the start.
Bruce was running sixth or seventh, making his way up the field,
and Denny got into the lead, and then the next thing there he is, in the pits.
Pit stop. What's wrong?
Drive shaft's melted off the side of the gearbox.
But Bruce's car was running particularly well.
Towards the end of the race,
he'd worked himself up into second place, behind Jackie Stewart.
Tyler was out there with the pit board to Bruce,
waving furiously, telling him to go faster and faster,
'cause there was every chance he could catch Jackie.
On the last lap, unbeknown to Bruce,
Jackie Stewart's car stopped, out of fuel.
But he didn't see Jackie run out, and he crossed the line.
As far as Bruce was concerned, he'd finished second,
and we were trying to say to him, "You've won. You've won.
You've won the race."
Oh, I just thought it was fantastic.
Absolutely fantastic. And he deserved it.
Bruce had now won Formula 1 Grand Prix in a car of his own design
and manufacture, bearing his name,
and it was just a major step forward for the race team.
It is so appropriate
that the first ever win for a McLaren in Formula 1
was with Bruce McLaren at the wheel.
And it was the second time in history that a driver won a Grand Prix
with his name on the nose of the car.
And it's never happened since.
I'd said to Bruce, you know, "When we first started over here
eight or nine years ago, and we dreamed about doing something on our own,
we didn't know how long it would take, when we could do it, but we've done it."
Here in a cul-de-sac, right under the flight path of London Airport,
is the home of one of the most successful
areas of British motor racing.
David Road was a very basic kind of English industrial estate.
To us at the time, it seemed like this was very grand, but...
Every 80 seconds we had a jet land over the top of us,
and if you're on the telephone, you just had to stop talking.
You'd have to say, "Excuse me, you've got to wait for 60 seconds
whilst the building vibrates."
Having the factory so close to the airport suited Bruce fine.
He was constantly in the air.
He was able to jump off the plane at the airport, get to David Road,
have a few meetings, and he'd be back on the plane within minutes.
Bruce and Denny spent a lot of time in airplanes
backwards and forwards across the Atlantic.
The drivers, Bruce and Denny's, involvement was split between
a Can-Am weekend, and then a Formula 1 weekend in Europe.
They'd fly in on the Thursday
because the jet lag was quite bad between England and the US.
And we'd run Friday, and then Saturday practice and qualifying,
and then race on Sunday.
Team McLaren earned more than $162,000 in prizes for the series.
Bruce must've been something of a workaholic.
There was this great need for him to be busy.
I'm not sure when he ever found time to sleep.
Bruce also did have big plans to manufacture street cars, road cars.
And I remember the prototype coupe that he built.
We were in England, setting up to get delivery of our next McLaren.
When we were in the office, he showed us this model that was there,
the GT that he wanted to build, because that was his dream.
We would like to do a road car in the future,
and we're talking and thinking about it. Some way down the line.
I hope it happens.
That road car really was Bruce's baby.
All the neighbors came out
when he very quietly tried to drive it out of the garage.
I only drove it briefly,
and wanted to show off when you had a cocktail party.
We're in a tremendously competitive year.
The cars are very, very equal.
They're all within tenths of a second on lap time.
This really keeps you working.
Cars were becoming increasingly more powerful,
and designers were trying to find ways of creating downforce
to keep the cars on the track, on fast corners in particular.
And cars started sprouting wings.
Aerofoil section. Put it on struts, stick it on the back of the car,
put something on the front to balance it out,
and it gives more downforce, and therefore more grip.
You know, aerodynamics has come a long way since those days
of us putting a wing on a minivan
and measuring the downforce with bathroom scales.
For the '69 season the car was designated M8B.
This was the car that we ran a high wing configuration,
with struts down on to the uprights, that proved to be unbeatable.
Group 7, the fastest racing cars in the world.
Champions McLaren and Hulme drive these cars to win on Gulf Premium No-nox.
If McLaren and Hulme depend on it
for power, performance and mileage, shouldn't you?
The success of Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme in Can-Am was extraordinary.
In 1969, there were 11 rounds of the Can-Am championship.
McLarens won all 11 of them.
Every race. Hulme won five, McLaren won six.
Just unbelievable.
He was bringing home buckets of cash.
Lots of other race team owners made themselves rich
and beggared their teams, and Bruce had it the right way round.
Put your money and your effort into your race team,
and then, when it's really winning, then you can live off the highlife.
So we've finished building the house in Walton-on-Thames.
Three-quarters of an acre. Mum, you'll love it, I'm sure.
I'm happy. It's a real family home.
We've called it Muriwai.
When you talk to anybody that's at their height,
it has to be all-consuming, it has to be your total life.
It was like working in a circus.
The circus would go to America, or the circus would go to Mexico,
or South Africa, and you would turn up at the racetrack,
it'd be the same tire people, and the same fuel people,
and all the other same team members,
and you hadn't seen each other for three weeks.
It was just like a small community that moved around the world.
New Zealander Bruce McLaren driving in his 100th Grand Prix
at the age of only 32.
Each year it gets a little harder to keep everything as neatly
and as nicely controlled as we did, you know, in previous years,
because there is just that much more administration,
there is that much more to go wrong.
We had grown very quickly in the space of two or three years.
Bruce was so busy that I would, sort of, wave to him as he passed in the factory.
It was always a rush to get the Formula 1 cars
built for the January, February start. And then Can-Am didn't start till June.
Resources were fairly stretched.
Not a huge team of people at all, maybe 50 guys
working on Can-Am, Formula 1 and Indianapolis cars as well.
People say the three big races in motorsport are
the Monaco Grand Prix, Le Mans, and the Indianapolis 500.
The Indy 500 is arguably the best-known race in the world.
I suppose it was logical for a workaholic to look at Indianapolis
as the next thing to tackle.
Yeah, he was building an empire.
Dear folks, two Indy cars went off last night.
And Denny, Chris Amon, Teddy and I
should be running at Indianapolis on Monday morning.
Nobody in the team, other than Denny,
really had any experience of the place.
Very early on in the month,
Denny's car caught fire going down the back straight.
Denny's overalls were on fire,
but because it was methanol, you couldn't see any flame burning.
And Denny ended up getting his hands badly burnt,
which put a stop to his driving, in fact he ended up in hospital.
We were scheduled for a test with the Can-Am car.
The entire month of May had been
a massive intersection of all of our projects.
Formula 1, Indianapolis and Can-Am was almost too much for one man.
And I think he'd come to the realization
that he was gonna need to step away from some driving.
And I suppose perhaps Patty had an influence on that as well,
understandably.
He'd just arrived back from America the day before,
from Indianapolis.
Denny should have been testing the car,
because of Bruce just being back and jet-Iagged.
But Denny couldn't drive.
The design side of the car hadn't changed a lot.
How are you gonna do a lot better than 11 out of 11 wins anyway?
The main change came about through banning high wings.
There were so many accidents in Formula 1 with the high wings...
that the Americans followed suit and banned them at the end of the year.
Cary Taylor and myself were at Goodwood.
And they were exploring rear-wing configurations.
They had a wing section hung between fins on the tail the first time,
and this generated huge amounts of downforce.
We were testing there with a Formula 1 car, and a Can-Am car.
And he was climbing from one car into the other.
He was in a great frame of mind, and I always remember,
he'd been to see the Sundance Kid film, and it took his fancy.
He was pretty impressed with that.
Ready?
No, we'll jump.
Oh, shit!
And you always stop at midday at Goodwood for lunch.
The Aero Club insists. But Bruce wanted to do one more run.
And he wanted to use some more rear wing.
There was a bit of a frantic "get the car out"
to get just another lap in to evaluate this particular adjustment.
You can hear those cars,
the V8 running about 6,000 revs, and those were monstrous engines.
All of a sudden, it's just...
And a silence.
Jim Stone and I jumped in my car, and then drove round.
And I lifted him out of the car, and it was obvious to me that he was dead,
because he was broken, and he was like a rag doll.
And so I... I held on to him.
I sat there and held him until the ambulance came,
and then the ambulance people took him off me.
It wasn't too long before I had a phone call,
and it was a tragic accident, and we had lost Bruce.
So... so...
being what we were, we took the broken car, put it in the truck,
and I drove the truck back to the factory.
I had to tell Patty what had happened.
A couple of the people from McLarens just came to the house.
I think one is in a state of shock for such a long time.
Amanda obviously was little, so she wasn't totally aware of it.
I said to Denny, "Let's just go outside."
So we went outside and walked around the lawn
and the garden in Bruce's house.
I realized I would have to call Bruce's parents in New Zealand.
And it was now after midnight there.
Pop answered the phone and it was just so difficult...
to tell them what had happened.
I spoke to Pop. I spoke to Mrs Mac,
and Mrs Mac said, "You know, I had a dreadful premonition this morning
that something was going to happen."
And I sat up suddenly in bed.
Just bolt upright. And Les says, "What's the matter?"
That whole day's come back, Roger.
It's...
You build a pretty close relationship with a driver. He's got to trust you.
And...
Yeah.
Yeah, a very sad day.
I wanted the boys to carry on, and I wrote a letter to the team,
the boys as I always called them.
My boys.
What happened should never have.
At, say, 180 mile an hour, with the rear wing set at a fairly high angle,
the rear section of the car lifted.
Unfortunately, there was a marshal's post, due for demolition,
hadn't been demolished, right in the path of the car.
Teddy and I decided we would get everybody in the factory together,
and we said to them, "Take tomorrow off."
The next day everyone turned up.
Yeah, we decided to carry on. I mean, that's what he would've wanted us to do.
Eoin Young, Patty McLaren and myself would fly out to New Zealand
for his funeral.
The funeral procession left to drive to the cemetery.
At every intersection, there was a traffic officer
making sure the lights were overridden,
so that the cortège was never going to be slowed down.
All of the traffic officers stood to attention
and saluted as we went through.
We got a huge photograph of Bruce,
and we put it up on the far wall of the factory, in the prototype shop.
Denny was there virtually every day,
other than the days that he had to go and see the specialist,
and he took over the mantle of team leader.
At the back of everyone's mind, of course,
was here we are due to be on Mosport, first Can-Am race, June 14th.
Within two weeks.
And so another car had to be built very quickly
if we were a functioning motor racing team.
They quickly designed a whole new system of struts
to hold the bodywork and the rear wing.
Denny said, "I'm going to drive at Mosport,"
because he said we've got to be there with two cars.
And we said, "No, you're not. You can't."
"The doctors have all said to you that, you know, your hands are so bad."
Denny certainly made it very obvious that,
come what may, he was driving.
The immediate thought was who can we approach to drive the second car?
The McLaren team is here,
dedicated to winning in the memory of their boss.
Dan Gurney, a close friend of Bruce's,
has volunteered to drive the second McLaren.
I drove a Can-Am car for McLaren
under the worst sort of circumstances, when Bruce left us.
I felt as though my old friend would probably be honored if I could do well,
and so I said yes.
He joins Denny Hulme, whose hands have been badly burned
in testing for the Indy 500. Against doctors' orders,
and with his hands heavily bandaged, Denny will race.
So on the grid at Mosport,
there's Denny with extremely painful, burnt hands,
and then that left hand went onto the wheel,
and we had to sort of mould it round the wheel so he could hold on.
Unbelievably the doctors at Mosport allowed him to start.
Denny led for most of the way, until he had gearbox problems.
Dan won the race.
Denny finished third.
It was a great opportunity to do something for Bruce
to keep things going.
McLaren went from success to success.
Teddy won the Can-Am Championship in 1970.
We'd won the Indy 500 in the new M16 with Mark Donohue.
In 1974, we achieved our ultimate goal,
we won the Formula 1 World Championship with Emerson Fittipaldi.
We won the Indy 500 with the works car with Johnny Rutherford.
Repeated that in 1976 with James Hunt in Formula 1,
Johnny Rutherford again at the Indy 500.
And McLaren became the only team in history
to have completed the World Championship Indy 500 double for two years.
The legacy of Bruce McLaren lives on.
I've always said that if Bruce had come into the factory one morning and said,
"OK, men," because he always addressed us collectively as men,
"OK, men, we're not gonna work on racing cars today,
we're gonna march across the Sahara Desert,"
we'd have all said, "OK, Bruce. You know, no problem."
I remember my first actual race.
It was on a beach at a place called Muriwai, in New Zealand.
And I was about 16.
It was probably the shortest, slowest race I'd ever win.
Certainly there was no prize money.
In fact, I might have got a certificate, which says,
"This hereby declares that B. McLaren
won a up to 1500cc all-comers handicap race."
But I was certainly excited by it.
They tell me that there have been quite a few modifications
carried out on this car of yours.
What would some of those modifications be?
I believe, for a start, you're using a bamboo space frame.
That's correct. It's a bamboo space frame.
And we're also using, the most sensational development
is of course the square wheel.
That gives us more tread area when the car is going sideways.
That's tread area on the ground, as you must of course understand.
Please rate this subtitle at www.osdb.link/am3h Help other users to choose the best subtitles