Dan Gurney 1931-2018

Photo: Joost Evers / Anefo

Dan Gurney was one of the truly great all-rounders of the late 50s and 60s.

Although he only scored four Formula One GP wins - including two in his own car the Eagle - he was a rival to Moss, Clark, Stewart in that most dangerous racing era, and all feared him as a serious competitor.

The Eagle Mk 1
Photo: John Chapman (Pyrope)

The funds for his "All American Racers" team soon ran out. However, he had greater success in all of the other formulae, especially at home in the USA competing in, and often winning, dozens of races in Champ Cars, CanAm, NASCAR and others. He'd race anything and race it well.

Perhaps his greatest success was winning Le Mans, partnering another American legend, A J Foyt and, as a consequence, accidentally inventing the now ubiquitous, podium champagne spraying ritual.

Americans really took the softly spoken charming gentleman to their heart and there was a time in the 1960s when he was even seriously proposed to run for the US presidency. I even have one of the lapel buttons to prove it! But Dan was too diffident to want that role, a pity.

His European fans never forgot him either. On the night before he was due at Goodwood's Festival of Speed, someone got onto the hill course to write "Viva Gurney" on the track in two foot high letters.

I'll echo that. Dan Gurney is dead, long live Dan Gurney. Truly a gentleman racer.

Graham Benge

Sir Jack Brabham

I was fortunate enough to meet and interview Sir Jack on many occasions, and I well remember he was always willing to stop and chat, even in his later years when his profound deafness made question and answer sometimes confusing!!

A triple World champion in 59, 60 and 66, he was a larger than life character, as many Aussies are. He could be a tough adversary, his robust driving in his early dirt track days in Australia earning him the epithet Black Jack.

Arriving in the UK with little money or experience, but loads of determination, Jack teamed up with John Cooper and his father. He soon started to win races against those such as Stirling Moss and Tony Brooks in the little Cooper F3 cars with their rear mounted motor cycle engines, and the Coopers and Jack soon got into F1 with what was then a revolutionary layout. The ultra lightweight rear-engined cars were nimble and soon started winning races, Sir Jack even pushing his car over the finish line to win his second World Championship without petrol!!

Sir Jack was also a very talented intuitive engineer, and his 3rd World Championship came in his own designed car, the only man to win a World Championship in a car with his own name on.

‘Brabham’ the car went on to be one of the great names but Jack retired just after winning his last race in 1970.

Slowed by poor health in recent years as he got into his late 80s, I remember his great enthusiasm for the Goodwood Revival in the 90s and early 00s where he raced against old friends and rivals with the same vigour as ever. Sir Jack was one of the great figures of a classic age of motor racing in the 50s and 60s, an age when the racing was as ferocious as the partying afterwards. A great character.

Graham Benge

Karl-Heinz Kalbfell 1949-2013

Karl-Heinz Kalbfell died following an accident during practise for a classic motorcycle race at Brands Hatch on 17th August.

Karl-Heinz, whom I interviewed several times in recent years, died racing bikes as was his lifelong passion, despite being in his 60s, but I knew him as one of the most far sighted men in the global motor industry.

A senior member of BMW’s main board his extraordinary vision brought them to global prominence.

Among other remarkable achievements, he was first to build a production facility in China, years before others recognised the buying power of their developing economy.

But probably his two greatest triumphs were persuading BMW to firstly buy Mini, then a loss making part of the British car industry, and soon after to buy and revive the greatest car in the world, Rolls Royce. Both companies have thrived under BMW ownership.

He led both projects not just with his business head but as a passionate fan of both marques.

He will be remembered as an extraordinarily farsighted member of an industry not noted for the number of its visionaries, and being the man who probably saved two Great British marques from oblivion.

Graham Benge