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1963... A year of contrasts for Bruce McLaren
Time waits for no man. And what a difference a day makes. Forty years ago international motor sport was nothing like the business it is today. It was all such a different, seemingly less complicated, world.
Four decades ago, and this was the swinging sixties. The Beatles were still climbing the charts, the first live television broadcast between the United States and Europe had been achieved using an experimental Telstar satellite, and Hayley Mills was starring in The Parent Trap movie.
On the motoring front, Ford launched the first generation Lotus Cortina in early 1963, while British Leyland was enjoying huge motor sport success with the new Mini Cooper S-Type and Erik Carlsson won the Monte Carlo Rally in a Saab. Australian Jack Brabham was beginning to make his mark with his own Formula 1 open wheelers and sports cars.
New Zealander Bruce McLaren was still finding his way up the Grand Prix ladder of fortune. He was in his fifth full season as a works Cooper Climax driver, and the first Formula 1 car to bear his name was still three years away.
1963 was something of a watershed year for the young 25-year-old. He had won the Monaco Grand Prix the previous year, but the Coopers were less competitive than they had been and McLaren’s best Formula 1 result in 1963 was second in the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa.
Bruce had been on the front row of the grid for the Dutch GP, finished third in both the Monaco and Italian Grands Prix and was fourth in South Africa. McLaren had campaigned a Cooper in the International races in New Zealand and Australia at the start of the year. He won the Teretonga race in the South Island of New Zealand, and thrilled spectators by some extraordinary drives with a Mini Cooper in supporting saloon car races.
McLaren also won in Melbourne, Australia, and returned to Britain to finish second to Innes Ireland at Goodwood in the Glover Trophy race. His Cooper was so new it was unpainted, and showed early promise after a somewhat dismal 1962.
New anti-dip settings were adopted for the 1963 Grand Prix Cooper, to improve handling and stop the nose diving under braking. McLaren led the first two laps of the International Daily Express Trophy race at Silverstone before being overtaken by Jim Clark’s works Lotus, powered by a similar Climax V8 engine. The New Zealander went on to finish second.
Despite qualifying third for the Dutch Grand Prix, Bruce had trouble with his gear selectors just before the start of the race, and had stopped at the pits with gearbox trouble after just a couple of laps. Transistor failure put him out of the French GP at Rheims, while Jim Clark continued to win race after race.
1963 wasn’t all bad for McLaren, however. On the high speed Spa road circuit in Belgium he turned on a brilliant performance in heavy rain to make up a minute and pass Dan Gurney’s Brabham in the final laps for second place. Bruce was running third in the early stages of the British Grand Prix when engine failure sidelined his Cooper.
The German Grand Prix on the notorious Nurburgring circuit was not a race McLaren wanted to remember. No one was sure what caused his Cooper to go off the road at more than 160 kilometres per hour. Approaching a sharp right-hand curve his Cooper had suddenly veered left into a ditch with what seemed to be suspension failure.
Bruce was hospitalised, returning to England with a plaster cast on his leg.
But his incident-packed year was not over. At Monza for the Italian GP, the left rear wheel bearing in the Cooper seized and exploded the magnesium casing while McLaren was under full acceleration on the high speed – and rather bumpy – banking. The Cooper went sideways on the steep baking for almost a kilometre at around 225 km/h in the frightening moment.
In a much slower 1963 episode, Bruce drove a 1904 Sunbeam in the annual London to Brighton veteran car run in November. Meanwhile, a pair of Cooper single seaters were being prepared for McLaren to campaign the Tasman Cup series in New Zealand and Australia early in 1964.
1963 was the year for Jim Clark in Formula 1. He scored 73 points in the championship – more than twice that of the next competitor. As only the six best results were counted in those days, his tally was actually 54, compared with BRM drivers Graham Hill and Ritchie Ginther, both with 29 points. John Surtees finished fourth, with Dan Gurney fifth and Bruce McLaren sixth.
For McLaren, this was a year of consolidation. Within five years he would have two bright orange McLarens in Grand Prix racing and a commanding hold on the rich North American CanAm sports car series.
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