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Since our last issue, motor racing has lost two gentlemen who
were great drivers and great sportsmen. The best known of these
in Australia was Chris Amon, who died at the age of 73 after a
lengthy battle with cancer. The New Zealander was said to be the
fastest driver never to win a World Championship Grand Prix.
He won the Tasman Series, Le Mans (with Bruce McLaren), the
Daytona 24 Hours, the Monza 1000 Km, the Nürburgring 6
Hours and many great races including eight non-Championship
Grands Prix (yes Virginia, there were F1 races outside the World
Championship back when
motor racing was a sport)
but never a World Championship F1 race. He was so
unlucky in F1 that Mario Andretti once remarked that
if Chris bought an undertaker, people would stop dying.
After his retirement from racing in 1976, Amon
returned to the family farm in New Zealand, which he
helped to run for a number of years. He was awarded
the MBE for services to motorsport in 1993.
The other driver we lost was "Gentleman" Jack Sears.
Jack won the very first British Saloon Car
Championship (BSCC) in unique circumstances. Towards the end of the 1958 season Jack
(Austin A105) and Tommy Sopwith (Jaguar 3.4)were equal on points, so the "men in
blazers" of the BRSCC came up with the idea that the championship could be decided on the
spin of a coin. Neither Jack nor Tommy wanted that so the proposal was put to BMC
Competition Manager Marcus Chambers that he might supply two identical saloons for a
run-off. Two rally equipped Riley 1.5 saloons were duly supplied and when the final round
of the championship at Brands Hatch ended with the two
locked together on points the two Rileys were rolled out
on to the grid. One car was slightly faster, so the drivers
would swap cars between the two 5-lap heats. Sopwith
won the first heat, Sears the second but Sears was 1.6
seconds faster over the two heats and was declared
champion. A second championship for Jack came in
1963, this time with the help of a thunderous seven-litre
Ford Galaxie, effectively ending Jaguar’s dominance of
the over 3-litre class. He also raced successfully in GT cars including a class win at Le Mans
in a Ferrari 330LMB with Mike Salmon in 1963. He caused a
furore when he drove a Cobra coupé at 185 mph on the M1
motorway in a pre-Le Mans test run in 1964. A huge accident
while testing a Lotus 40 ended Jack's racing career but he had
won the Nürburgring 6 Hours of that year in a Lotus Cortina,
so he went out as a winner. After racing, Jack was organiser of
the London to Sydney Rally in 1968, served as President of the
BRDC, the club that runs Silverstone, and later was Chairman
of the Ferrari owners Club.
Both Chris and Jack will be sadly missed.
AVE ATQUE VALE
Sears' Austin and Jeff Uren's Zephyr
A relaxed Chris Amon
The Amon/McLaren GT40 Mk II
Sears' Galaxie storms away