Doug Nye – How Vanwall beat them all

Freddie was, in fact, one of the remarkable personalities who also helped build British prestige within the motor racing world so that our rating progressed from irrelevance to domination.

Another was Guy Anthony ‘Tony’ Vandervell, of Vandervell Products, ‘ThinWall’ shell bearings, and Vanwall Formula 1 team fame. Into the later 1950s, ever since significant level motor racing had restarted postwar in 1946, Italian manufacturers had ruled the roost, save for a brief 18-month period when Mercedes-Benz of Germany weighed-in, and crushed everybody else – the Italians included. Otherwise, it was a question of take your pick amongst the great Italian marques – Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Maserati or briefly Lancia…  They did the winning, and their colour was red.

In the UK, Raymond Mays’ complex and under-funded BRM V16 project had staggered through its infancy with G.A. Vandervell the hard-nosed, uncompromising “rugged old bugger” (as one of his business associates described him) who was on of the project’s earliest and most energetic supporters.

But before very long his business sense convinced him that a Trust committee running a cooperative industrial venture was no way to run a railway, let alone a Grand Prix racing team. When interminable problems of supply and cooperative agreement and bureaucracy hampered the programme, it was ‘GAV’ who smashed his way through the red tape and political niceties and simply bought a V12 Ferrari to give BRM’s chaps practical experience of actual motor racing at modern Formula 1 level.

This would be the first of four such cars which Vandervell’s experimental department engineers at his Acton bearings factory campaigned, to a greater or lesser degree, under the ‘ThinWall Special’ name.

Vandervell Products actually supplied the shell bearings which had made Ferrari’s V12 engines a practical and reliable racing proposition, so the Italian factory was not about to upset GAV… but of course, they did…

What Mr Ferrari and his men at Maranello seemed not to appreciate was that Vandervell Products’ experimental department, and its staff, were at least as well-qualified, experienced and capable as the Italians were. ‘GAV’ set his quality-control inspectors to survey the first Ferrari delivered to him, and when they proved that it contained many used components and worn parts presumably cannibalized from other, earlier, cars, Mr Ferrari got the most tremendous flea in his ear from his crucial bearings supplier.

In consequence, much of the subsequent dealing between Mr Vandervell in Acton and Mr Ferrari in Maranello was conducted in a pretty confrontational, hard-nosed manner. Between those two it really was a case of flint cut flint, because both industrialists were really cut from the same cloth. Both absolutely loved racing engines, and the technical challenges they presented. 

GAV’s rugged personality meant that he rapidly lost patience with the high-flown, idealistic and in some ways frankly silly sensitivities of running the BRM V16 project. Soon he forged out on his own, to go racing his own way. He declared that his avowed intention was simply “to beat those bloody red cars”.  He meant it. And he managed it.

Soon his ever-developing series of ‘ThinWall Special’ Ferraris – with their ultimately 4½-litre unsupercharged V12 engines – were heavily modified and improved by his in-house VP engineers. They ran disc brakes and they became a major thorn in the flesh of the BRM V16s – then owned and campaigned by Alfred Owen’s family industrial group – in Formule Libre racing 1952-55 – not least at Goodwood.

While that rivalry produced riveting racing for British crowds, it did nothing to promote national engineering prestige internationally – which was the objective to which Raymond Mays, Alfred Owen and GAV had all dedicated their motor sporting ambition.

Vandervell set his heart upon developing a Formula 2 car of his own to contest the 1953 World Championship Grand Prix series. The rules demanded a 2-litre unsupercharged design. GAV was a director of Norton motorcycles and he felt that a 4-cylinder design based upon their World-beating single-cylinder technology could excel. A suitable water-cooled engine based upon four Norton-style cylinder barrel and head design, upon a common crankcase developed from the Rolls-Royce B40 military power unit’s, was designed and built.

For a chassis GAV consulted John Cooper of the Cooper Car Co. Rugged old Vandervell and genial young John just hit it off and got on well – talking the same no-nonsense, practical language. Their prototype Formula 2 would be called the ‘Vanwall Special’, but its debut was delayed until the 1954 International Trophy at Silverstone, driven by Cooper veteran Alan Brown. It had missed the last season of 2-litre F2, and the new engine was rapidly enlarged, first to 2.3 litres and finally to a full 2.5-litre Formula 1 size in time for the September 1954 Goodwood meting. It was driven there by Vandervell’s rising young star, Peter Collins.

GAV authorized production of a full team of these cars – four of them – for 1955, when the ‘Special’ part of their marque name was dropped, and Vanwall emerged. With disc brakes and fuel injected 4-cylinder engines these were advanced machines, hampered by their rather hefty, unsophisticated and quite flexible Cooper-drawn chassis. Harry Schell actually won four minor British events in these cars, which were also driven by Mike Hawthorn, Ken Wharton and Des Titterington.

Before the end of that year grumpy GAV realised he needed a far better chassis. A VP team transporter driver, Derek Wootton – suggested to team manager David Yorke that a pal of his might be able to help. That pal’s name was Colin Chapman, of Lotus Engineering. Derek and Colin had been teenage mates sharing an interest in 750 Formula Austin 7-based specials. Chapman brought his stress-man skills to bear on the Vandervell requirement, won the commission and brought in his aerodynamicist friend Frank Costin to create a wind-cheating body form.

What emerged was the 87.5lb multi-tubular spaceframe chassis within the definitive ‘teardrop’ Vanwall bodywork, with its tall tail, extensively fared-in cockpit and probing bird’s beak nose cone. Through 1956 these Vanwall works cars ran progressively harder, and faster, and with drivers like Schell and Maurice Trintignant managed to give the Italian teams – Ferrari and Maserati – pause for thought.

Into 1957 GAV energetically stoked the blazing fire he always kept burning beneath his engineers’ and suppliers’ backsides. His pursuit of that ambition “to beat those bloody red cars” was single-minded and totally determined, hang the expense. Experience through 1956 had proved that reliability should be improved, but also that Vanwall needed topline drivers. GAV signed up the best of British – Stirling Moss, and Tony Brooks – and by mid-season added Stuart Lewis-Evans. Each was truly world-class. By the time of the British GP at Aintree in July 1957 Vanwall reliability was sufficient to outlast Ferrari and Maserati, and Moss and Brooks combined to outrun them too. They won that World Championship-qualifying Grand Prix – a first in racing history for an all-British operation.

But GAV’s implacable will to win was never self-defeatingly ‘all-British’ in character. Oh no – he instead recognised the value of what BRM’s all-British obsession denied them. His own ‘ThinWall’ bearings were derived from American patents, as were his Vanwall’s disc brakes (Goodyear) while his fuel injection was German (Bosch), and fuel tank construction and piping Italian. To win he would go to the world’s best, never mind the flag.  This was one “rugged old bugger” who was absolutely no little-Englander – although many of his personal beliefs and attitudes would probably see him excoriated today by liberal-minded standards as a racist, sexist, profiteering, tax-avoiding, unacceptable capitalist of the toughest kind. The counter-arguments are many – he was a true captain of industry, commanding a major manufacturer of a truly world-class product in global industrial demand. The imposing industrialist who at black-tie functions would blithely wear plimsolls with his dinner suit because “my feet hurt” paid little attention to any detractors. He ran a tight ship. He commanded with a rod of iron, but he was also caring of his crew – and their respect for him was almost absolute.

After that ground-breaking British GP win, GAV’s Vanwall team really stuck it to the red cars, by winning the Pescara and Italian GPs on Italian soil. When the three works Vanwalls qualified 1-2-3 at Monza, the Milan Club organisers revised their starting grid to a 4-3-4 pattern just to get Fangio’s red Maserati onto what would have been an all-British Racing Green front row. OMG – as a schoolboy in Guildford I thought I would burst with pride!

Through 1958 the further-developed ‘teardrop’ Vanwalls were really the Formula 1 cars to beat. GAV’s refusal to contest the late-organised season-opening Argentine GP cost his people points, but in the remaining nine GPs Vanwall won six, took a second and two third places and set two fastest laps (which in those days scored an extra Championship point). But Moss and Tony Brooks were so well matched that they divided the winning between them – Stirling taking the Dutch, Portuguese and Moroccan GPs – Tony the Belgian, German and Italian races. And so Mike Hawthorn of Ferrari stole the 1958 Drivers’ Championship by one point – but Vanwall carried off the inaugural Formula 1 Constructors’ World Championship in great style, and those red cars had been soundly beaten by the green…

GAV’s avowed ambition had been achieved, but at great cost. In the Moroccan GP team driver Stuart Lewis-Evans had been fatally burned when his Vanwall’s high-mileage engine failed, locked the rear wheels and sent him crashing into trackside rocks. Vandervell was deeply affected by Lewis-Evans’ loss – and his own health was already faltering after a lifetime of high stress, massive workload and a frenetic schedule – fuelled fully by cigarettes, and alcohol…

On January 12, 1959, Vandervell Products announced that the team was to withdraw from regular competition. “I must now leave the good work to the other green car manufacturers,” GAV declared, and I wish them good luck…”

The Vanwall team would dabble half-heartedly with Formula 1, and on a one-off basis 1961 InterContinental Formula racing, from 1959-61 – almost as if GAV was not prepared to sustain his works racing team full-time, but could not rid himself entirely of ‘The Bug’.

Over that three-year postscript period Vanwalls would race four more times, in the 1959 British GP, the Goodwood Glover Trophy and French GP of 1960, and the May Silverstone ICF race of 1961 (with their unique rear-engined car).

On March 10, 1967, Tony Vandvervell died, aged still only 68. But his creation – Vanwall – had shown the way, and next year marks the 60^th anniversary of the Vandervell team’s ground-breaking British GP victory – 1957-2017. We, at Goodwood, will not let it pass unmarked…

Photography courtesy of The GP Library.