In the early 1970s, motor racing, even Formula 1, was a very different world to what we see today. Just how big those differences were are explained in the following story......
Even to those who would have to admit to being REAL
F.1 Anoraks, the name Connew is probably totally meaningless. A single entry in
any F.1 records book does not even begin to scratch the surface of what is, I
believe, a remarkable story. Of course, I am biased, having been one of the
three major members of the Peter Connew Motor Racing team. However, I think
anyone who reads it will have to admit, it was a very brave effort.
Peter Connew, who at the time was about 24 years old, had trained as a design
draughtsman, and had been working for a company that made, amongst other things,
record decks. I was a couple of years younger, and was teaching. We both lived
in East London, although 10 miles apart, and rarely actually met. (We are
cousins, I should point out.) The odd thing was that I had been an F.1 fanatic
since the cradle, while Peter was never in the slightest bit interested in
racing cars. Big yankee saloons were his thing. Imagine my utter disbelief when
he called round one day to tell me that he had changed jobs, and was now working
for John Surtees; working on the design modifications to his new F.1 McLaren,
and then on the very first Surtees F.1 car. If you look at a picture of that
McLaren, you will see that it had very distinctive side pannier type pods on the
side of the car; Peter was responsible for the design of those tanks.
Peter was a fiercely independent character, (still is !) and unknown to
anyone, shortly after he begun working for Surtees, he begun the design work for
an F.1 car of his own. Of course, he is by no means the first person to feel
that he they could do the job on their own, but most never get past the drawing
board. Peter did !
I never knew anything about the project until early February in 1971, when I
was invited to visit the home of a friend of Peter, in Barking, Essex. Peter
took me upstairs, and there, sitting on the floor of an empty room, was a
beautifully rivetted, shiny F.1 chassis. I simply couldn't believe my eyes. Nor
my ears, when Peter asked me if I would like to join the team ! Would I ? I
would have walked over hot coals to be part of such a project.
The outline of the deal was that there was a second chassis in the jigs (in
another friend's garage) and all being well, the car should be on the grid at
Monaco four months later. Isn't optimism a wonderful thing ? My first job was to
make a large scale model of the car, which Peter could take around, suitably
painted, to show potential sponsors. By this time, Peter had left Surtees, and
was working in a small engineering firm, which enabled him to make some small
components in his lunch hour which we could never have afforded to have made
commercially. We had a small lathe in the garage, but it was very limited in its
capacity.
At this point, I should mention the other two members of the team, both of
whom were part of it before me. Roger Doran was a shopfitter, and meticulous in
everything he did, while Ronnie Olive was a useful man with engineering. In
March, we had left the garage of Peter's friend JG, mainly because his wife was
getting a bit bolshy about the noise etc. Peter scouted around, and soon found a
small, (very small !) workshop just off the Romford Road at Chadwell Heath, and
we were very proud as we moved all our stuff in, because we were now an
independent outfit.
I left teaching at Easter '71, with the expectation that 'any day now' the
guaranteed sponsorship deal would appear, and we would be on our way ! To make
some money, I went to work for the Co-op, in the Funeral dept; while Roger and
Ron carried on with their respective jobs. This meant that our time in the
workshop was limited to weekends and evenings (as I recall, we worked 3 nights
each week) and so wives and girlfriends had to be content with rarely seeing us.
Under these conditions things get done terribly slowly, and it became obvious
very soon that not only were we not going to make Monaco, but we were going to
be very lucky to even make Monza !
I must stress that although we were no more than a bunch of East End lads,
working in a lock-up, this was no bodge job. Every aluminium part on the car was
anodised, and the steel was chrome plated. All our welding was done by Roger's
father, known to us as 'Daddy D', who was an expert welder, and also bought even
more enthusiasm to the project. Round about the middle of 1971 we lost Ronnie
Olive from the team, as he was not very happy about the fact that 'when' we went
full-time on the thing, there wouldn't be any overtime paid. Ron was a good
union man, but didn't really understand how motor racing worked. I still recall
the discussions. “Look Ron, if we are getting the car ready to leave for a race
on Tuesday, and things are not done by Monday 5 p.m you can't just say 'Knocking
off time' and go home. It just doesn't work like that.” So Ron left.
As a woodwork teacher, I was going to be responsible for making the wooden
patterns for the bodywork etc. And then the fibreglassing. Did I know anything
at all about pattern making or fibreglassing ? Not a scrap. Peter's attitude was
that there is nothing magic in this world. Common sense, application and half an
ounce of intelligence will overcome most obstacles. Of course, he was right.
Most of the British F.1 teams at that time had their bodywork made by
Specialised Mouldings, but there was no way we could afford anything like that,
so it was 'do it yourself'. I carved out the nose section from a light, but very
stable timber called Jelutong. With no special equipment imagine the problems in
getting a multi-curved, shaped block of wood and filler nearly a metre square to
be symmetrical about its centre line !!! Quite !! Anyway, it got done; as did
the cockpit surround. We contemplated a fibreglass rear wing, but shelved it in
favour of aluminium.
The problem confronting us was always the same; money, or rather, the lack of
it. Peter was pouring every penny he earned into the project, but the rest of us
could contribute merely time and effort. Of course, a fiver here, and a tenner
there would buy quite a bit of material in those days, but the major items
required for the car, engine, gearbox, petrol tanks, wheels as well as simpler
things like exhaust pipes and windscreens were simply way beyond our meagre
resources. Still, the project never stopped because there was always something
that needed doing.
It must have been quite late in 1971 when Peter, through contacts made during
his time with Surtees, managed to borrow an engine (Cosworth DFV of course) and
Hewland DG 300 gearbox. Sadly, they were non-working ones, but real
nevertheless. At least we could now put the thing together. I can still remember
my excitement on checking the engine number (906) and thumbing back through my
Autosports, to find that it was the engine used by Jochen Rindt when he won his
first GP in the U.S. in 1969 !! So the car was not a runner, but with some
borrowed wheels, at least we could put it together, which would give us
something to show to anyone who might have considered sponsoring us.
Peter believed that the only colour racing cars should be was red. So the car
was taken to a local sprayer and painted. A very vivid memory (amongst many) is
of a winter Sunday evening when the car was taken off the stands and put on the
floor, on wheels, for the fist time. O.K, it had a dummy engine and gearbox, no
exhausts, no airbox (I hadn't made it yet) and steel bars instead of shock
absorbers, but it looked GREAT.
Sponsorship was hard to come by. You can't really blame company directors for
being sceptical when they heard how and where the car had been built, although
the occasional visitors to the garage (e.g. Stuart Turner, who at the time was
Ford Motor Company competition dept head) were always extremely impressed by the
quality of our efforts. It was generally known that Yardley, who had sponsored the B.R.M team for a
few years were becoming disillusioned with them. Peter got me to paint up our
model in the Yardley 'Black Label' aftershave colours, and off he went to see
them. Of course, we did not know that the deal that took them to McLaren had
already been done, but Peter's approach sufficiently impressed them for them to
ring Phil Kerr of McLaren and ask if they might help us out in some way. To
their eternal credit, they did too, as you will learn later.
It must have amazed the local residents when a
group of young men pushed this strange looking racing car out of the yard, onto
the main London Road, and onto the forecourt of a local garage. You see, it was
the only place with enough light to take a photo. I still treasure that first
photo. The following morning, in daylight, we pushed the car out onto the public
highway again, and into the car park of the local library, where there was a
nice background for some more photos. These photos, plus my model, made up
Peter's sponsorship attracting kit, which he carried around wherever he went.