Remembering Louis Stanley Louis Stanley died in January, aged 92. His name may not mean much to younger readers, but he was regarded as the BRM team principal in the late 1960s, and through to the team's eventual demise in 1977. "Big Lou" as he was generally known, cut an imposing figure in the paddock. He had an aura of distinction that opened locked doors and disposed of airport queues as though they were composed of nothing more than smoke. Most Continentals believed him to be a lord, and received benign smiles when they addressed him as "my lord". Beneath that patrician exterior lay a capable individual who cared greatly about the BRM team, about motor racing in general, and wrote a knowledgeable book about tennis. Mr. Stanley, formerly the managing director of the Dorchester Hotel, rose to greater prominence when he married Jean, sister of Sir Alfred Owen, chairman of the Owen Group of companies that owned the BRM title and team. As Sir Alfred's health declined, Mr. Stanley assumed greater importance at the head of the race team, finally taking full control on Sir Alfred's death in 1974. The BRM team peaked in 1962 when Graham Hill won the Drivers Championship in the V8 powered P57, and continued to be a top-three team through to the end of the 1967 season. The arrival of the Ford Cosworth DFV engine started the rot. Light, compact and efficient, the combination of Keith Duckworth's V8 and Colin Chapman's Lotus 49 proved almost invincible, once reliability issues had been resolved. Then the DFV became available to other 'kit car' teams, notably Brabham, Tyrrell and McLaren, and the V12 powered BRMs and Ferraris were in trouble. Hill defected to the Lotus team at the start of the 1967 season ("I was afraid they [BRM] would stand me in a corner and paint me green" he jested) and was soon followed by designer Tony Rudd, who was very highly valued at Lotus. There were some memorable victories in BRM's pipeline, but they became increasingly rare. Jackie Stewart had marked himself as a future champion in a BRM, claiming his first two Grand Prix victories in the dark green cars from Bourne, and in the V12 period that followed, starting in 1968, victories were claimed by Pedro Rodriguez (Spa in 1970), Jo Siffert (Austria, in 1971), Peter Gethin (Monza, in 1971) and Jean-Pierre Beltoise (Monaco, in 1972). Louis Stanley shared Jackie Stewart's deep concerns about safety, from the time of the Scotsman's frightening accident in a BRM at Spa in 1966. The issue came to a head when Jochen Rindt died while practising for the Italian Grand Prix in 1970. His Lotus 72 veered sharply to the left when the shaft connecting the wheel to the inboard front brake disc snapped, piling the Austrian into the guardrail approaching Parabolica. Rindt died instantly, I was told by an English doctor who was among the first on the scene. He had dreadful injuries but there was little bleeding, because his heart stopped beating. The Italians took a long time to extract Rindt's body, then the ambulance left the circuit in a leisurely way and got stuck in traffic. He was declared dead on arrival at the hospital, and I was told by Franco Lini, the eminent Italian journalist and former Ferrari team manager, that this was the normal way of doing things. If Rindt had been declared dead at the scene of the accident, the police would have taken over and cordoned the circuit for days. The Italian Grand Prix would not have taken place in 1970. Mr. Stanley didn't see it that way at all, making a great noise about the appalling inefficiency of the marshals, the medics, the ambulance and the organisation in general. He started a public subscription and had the Grand Prix Medical Unit built and hauled to every Grand Prix in Europe in 1971, yet after a couple of seasons it was seen no more. The same English doctor I have just mentioned, Dr. Nancekevil who I believe was the BRSCC's official medic, was adamant that a badly injured driver must be stabilised in the shortest possible time, at the trackside, and then moved only once, to the nearest or best hospital. Once stabilised, it would be less risky to make one journey of, say, 20 minutes than via an on-site medical unit. Louis Stanley meant well, everyone knew that, and he didn't have the means to turn BRM's fortunes around in the face of the DFV powered 'kit cars' which dominated the era. The BRM V12's mechanical efficiency was extremely dubious. It was a big and heavy lump which failed even to match the power of the DFV, when 400 horsepower was the Holy Grail figure for a 3-litre racing engine. 'Big Lou' maintained a suite at the Dorchester, and in 1970 I was invited to take tea with the great man. And during this pleasant interlude Mr. Stanley received a phone call from Aubrey Woods, the man charged with developing the BRM V12. "Aubrey, that is splendid news. Absolutely splendid. I have Mike Cotton with me, the editor of Motoring News. Please speak to him and tell him what you have just told me." Aubrey, a lovely chap, repeated to me that he had put a V12 development engine on the dyno and had just seen a peak reading of 405 horsepower, and I was duly impressed. I still had lingering doubts, although the Tony Southgate designed P153 performed better on the high speed circuits like Spa, the old Osterreichring and Monza, and eventually I thought that I had been 'had' in the nicest possible way. No hard feelings, though. The decline of BRM, which became a 'renta-drive' outfit in the 1975-1977 era (when the cars were renamed 'Stanley BRM', or Stanley Steamers in paddock parlance) was sad to see. Our friend John Mangoletsi revived the BRM name, and resuscitated the V12 engine, for the last act of the Group C sports car formula, but he didn't have any luck either. He kept the tradition going, some would say. |
Michael Cotton, January 2004 |