The occasional pit-lane, track or even podium flare-up between top racing drivers is hardly uncommon, and it all adds to the high-octane atmosphere of motorsport.
But what do leading drivers really think about each other? About their abilities, tactics, sportsmanship - and their off-track personalities? It’s mostly been a matter of conjecture - until now.
Published in support of cancer charity ‘Hope for Tomorrow’, a new book, ‘Drivers on Drivers’, features some of the best-known names in motor racing speaking frankly about their greatest rivals, as well as their heroes and teammates. And, as often turns out to be the case, their friends.
In what the publishers rightly describe as a ‘unique concept’, the book features 31 interviews with - or about - legends ranging from the stars of the 1950s such as Tony Brooks and 1960s icon Paddy Hopkirk, to Derek Bell, Mika Hakkinen, and today’s personalities such as Sir Lewis Hamilton.
Avoid
Intriguingly, sometimes touchingly, the legends open up about what really made their fellow drivers tick, offering unique insights into what separated the great from the good, who they looked up to and learned from. And who to avoid on-track.
Included in the roundup are interviews with greats including Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber, Jackie Stewart on Jim Clark and Gerhard Berger on Ayrton Senna. The interviews were conducted by Philip Porter, along with motorsport writers and broadcasters including Ian Wagstaff, Peter Windsor, Mark Cole, Ben Edwards, Louise Goodman, Simon Taylor and David Tremayne.
As the publishers say, the book contains ‘stories of tragedy and humour, triumph and disaster’, as the names open up on their friendships, rivalries and inner thoughts. The interviews are backed up with more than 100 photographs celebrating on-track battles and big career moments, alongside snapshots of the drivers’ interactions with fellow competitors.
One of more poignant interviews is with the late, great, Sir Stirling Moss, by Philip Porter, carried out between 2005 and 2010. Typically, Moss has many generous words to say about other drivers, including Tony Brooks, a ‘very nice, ordinary person’, who ‘didn’t come over as being a very competitive driver until he began racing’.
Lavatory
The same could sometimes be said of Moss, whom I interviewed for the Evening Standard in the 1990s, when he invited me to his Mayfair home. He proudly demonstrated his heated lavatory seat (which he activated from a switch at his desk, urging me to run my hand over the seat before and after actuation), his specially-installed three-storey lift (in 2010s he fell down the shaft, sustaining serious injuries), and his DIY communication system with his wife Susie, (a system of office trays conveying papers to and from her room above his, by means of electrically-powered wires and pulleys).
Then he took me on a spin in his tiny van to show ‘how Londoners ought to drive in the city’. It was more of a race than a commute as he sped from his home in Shepherd Street to his lockup in Battersea in a series of toe-curling overtakes, in the days before 20mph zones and speed cameras.
On rival Mike Hawthorn, Moss observes: “I actually lent him my car to race once! He was quite a good driver, nice bloke, careful with the car, so he was a good person to lend it to.”
Hamilton
Elsewhere in this intriguing, highly enjoyable, somewhat revelatory 144-page coffee-table book, 22-times Grands Prix winner Damon Hill, commenting on Lewis Hamilton, says: “Lewis has become politically aware, but you wouldn’t have got a driver in the 1960s or ‘50s doing something like that. They used to race anywhere and turn a blind eye. They just got on with their lives and raced all over the place.”
Five-times Le Mans 24 Hours winner Derek Bell remembers Graham Hill as ‘a riot’ but ‘wise’, and says that the ‘bravest’ driver he competed against was West German Stefan Bellof. Lewis Hamilton, the most successful driver in Grand Prix History, says that the outstanding competitors of his career have been Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel. He says that the ‘best driver of all time has to be Aryton Senna’, adding: “he inspired me so much as a kid, I was in awe of him. Watching him race always inspired me to work even harder.”
Drivers on Drivers is itself inspiring - and great background reading for any lover of motorsport. It is published by Porter Press International, and costs £30.
