82 New Zealand Classic Car | themotorhood.com
had been nearly good enough for the title.
They went to the final race in a three-way
battle with eventual champion Graham Hill,
in a Lotus, and Denny Hulme, whose
McLaren had got stronger as the year went
on. Matra’s investment seemed limitless.
In addition to the new MS80, Matra also
had its own V12 engine, and, like McLaren
and Lotus, also entered the blind alley (for
Formula 1 [F1]) of four-wheel drive.
No-nonsense pragmatists like Jack Brabham
and Ron Tauranac had a feeling that
four-wheel drive was a road to nowhere - a
description that also applied to ‘our Bruce’?
In a radio interview in the mid ’90s, I asked
McLaren team manager Phil Kerr why a new
company like McLaren, already heavily into
Can-Am, together with the newly created
Formula 5000 and F1, would have bothered
with this level of investment.
He replied, “I was dead against it. We
couldn’t afford it, even if it worked, but
Bruce was an engineer at heart and he just
couldn’t help himself from wanting to find
out ... We knew Lotus were building one and
the competitor in Bruce just wanted to beat
whatever [Colin] Chapman came up with.”Ugly cars don’t win races
McLaren’s four-wheel drive, the M9A,
appeared just once. It was as unattractive as
its more conventional sister was handsome.
Its performance supported the theory that
ugly racing cars generally don’t achieve much.
As Phil Kerr recalls of the car’s only race, the1969 British GP: “We had Derek Bell driving
it. He really went up in my estimation that
weekend and did his best in what was a bad
motor car.”
There were more four-wheel-drive cars in
that race than for any other GP — in fact,
four — and they occupied the final two rows.
Bell was second quickest of this subgroup,
but, after the suspension collapsed after six
laps, the whole thing was quickly forgotten.
The M9A languished for decades in the
Donington museum, a papaya-hued example
of mechanical misadventure, and a rare
McLaren dud.
As an aside, the 1969 British GP also
marked another last-seen. After yet another
retirement, Ferrari and its number-one driver
Chris Amon decided to park the V12 and
focus on the new flat-12 for the Italian GP
seven weeks hence. That meant skipping
Germany, where only 13 F1 cars faced
the start.
So to Monza. In 1972, chicanes were
introduced to what had previously been the
fastest track on the calendar. That meant
slipstreaming was the order of the day,
with close finishes a regular outcome. The
big question for 1969 was what to do with
the wings. Matra and Lotus ditched theirs,
but they were retained on the McLarens
and Brabhams. The seven-car battle for the
lead early on became a five-car blur with
five laps remaining, but that became four
when Hill dropped out. In contention in
this high-speed, high-drama thriller werechampion-elect Stewart, Matra teammate
Jean-Pierre Beltoise, the still-winless Austrian
Jochen Rindt, and the McLaren of Bruce.
Average lap speeds were nudging 243kph,
and, indeed, the winning average speed
was 236.52kph. This was not for the faint-
hearted; it was the time when motor racing
was at its most dangerous. Circuit safety, tyre
technology, and chassis construction had
not kept pace with increased engine power
and traction.A finish for the ages
Despite there being no Ferraris in contention,
the massive crowd was treated to a finish for
the ages. Rindt, who’d started from pole,
was possibly the most desperate, and he went
around Stewart on the last lap. Then Beltoise
took them both in a no-margin-for-error
out-braking effort. In the vanguard of this
rapid train was Bruce. Stewart and Rindt
retook Beltoise as they headed for the flag.
The crowd was going nuts as Stewart won
by 0.08s, with Beltoise 0.09s behind Rindt,Above: Unlovely and unlovedBelow: Jackie Stewart’s 1969 championship–winning Ford Cosworth–powered Matra MS80