Doug Nye: Tony Vandervell and Vanwall's relentless hunger for victory

The background is of course familiar. Ever since significant-level motor racing had resumed postwar, in 1946, Italian manufacturers had ruled the roost save for the brief season-and-a-a-half of German Mercedes-Benz involvement. It was a question of taking your pick amongst the great Italian marques – Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Maserati or briefly Lancia – they did the winning, and their colour was red.

Here in Britain, Raymond Mays’ complex BRM V16 project, aimed to produce a Grand Prix-winning racing car created by industrial cooperation involving numerous companies, philosophies (and egos), had staggered through its infancy. Bearings manufacturer Guy Anthony Vandervell had been one of the BRM project’s most committed and enthusiastic backers. One of his business associates summed up ‘Tony’ Vandervell as simply “a rugged old bugger”. He certainly took a rugged approach to BRM as he found that its committee system running a cooperative industrial effort was no way at all to run a racing team. While interminable delays dogged the original BRM V16 programme and prevented them from making a racing debut, he smashed his way through the red tape and bureaucracy and bought the team a V12 Ferrari Grand Prix car, on which to gain some practical racing experience at the top level.

This became the first of four such cars which his experimental department engineers at Acton campaigned under the bearings brand name as the ‘ThinWall Special’. Ferrari helpfully lettered up some cam covers for the first one, lettered ‘Tinwell’ – but never mind. Vandervell provided the bearings which made Ferrari’s V12 engines a practicable proposition, so the Italians were not about to upset him – but of course, they did. What they didn’t initially understand was that Vandervell Products had a technical inspection department and engineering capability at least as good as anything at Maranello. Tony Vandervell, known to his staff as GAV or ‘The Old Man’, had his people tear the unsatisfactory car apart and when they found it had been assembled from used and cannibalised components he tore a strip of Mr Ferrari such as his Italian counterpart had not experienced in decades.

Vandervell’s brusque, impatient and demanding character dictated that he would rapidly lose patience with the top-heavy BRM management’s muddled thinking, prevarication and politicking. He concluded that the programme stood little hope of ever winning Formula 1 races consistently, so he decided to opt out, go it alone and “beat those bloody red cars” on his own.

Soon his ever-developing series of “ThinWall Special” Ferraris driven by Dr Farina, Piero Taruffi, Reg Parnell, Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins was proving itself a highly competitive thorn in the side of what emerged as the BRM V16 Formule Libre cars. By this time in 1952-53 Formula 2 was the FIA’s selected World Championship Grand Prix category, and Vandervell determined to build an un-supercharged 2-litre racing car to compete.

Amongst other business interests, he was a director Norton, the world-beating motorcycle manufacturer, and he felt that a 4-cylinder racing engine based upon their highly successful 500cc single-cylinder power unit could excel. So he had such a power unit designed, with four Norton-style cylinder barrels integrated en bloc with added water jackets for cooling, based upon a rugged crankcase developed from that of the Rolls-Royce B40 military power unit, but now re-cast in lightweight aluminium. The design was detailed by a team under Norton’s Polish-born engineer, Leo Kusmicki. 

The Old Man was very open-minded, technically speaking, and he looked beyond the BRM-like confines of British industry at what the world outside could provide. He was attracted by Goodyear aviation-style disc brakes from the USA, by Bosch fuel injection from Germany, Pirelli tyres from Italy, and so on. He just wanted the best. 

He had a soft spot for the boyish enthusiasm, drive (and racing success) of the Coopers, father and son, in their little Surbiton factory. They didn’t “mess about” – they just built cars and went racing, no compromise. He commissioned John to have a chassis designed and made to accept his new engine, and after some delays, a first prototype ‘Vanwall Special’ was ready during the winter of 1952-53. By that time a new 2 ½-litre Formula 1 had been launched for the 1954-57 seasons, superseding 2-litre Formula 2 and defunct old 1.5 supercharged/4.5 unsupercharged Formula 1.

The car made its debut in the May 1954 International Trophy race at Silverstone, driven by Alan Brown. The engine was rapidly enlarged, first to 2.3 litres in time for Peter Collins to drive in that July’s British GP, and finally to a full 2½-litres in time for Collins to compete at Goodwood in the September Meeting. Here he finished second in the 21-lap Formula 1 race while Mike Hawthorn took over to place fourth in a 10-lap Formule Libre event. Collins went well in the car in that year’s Italian GP, but then wrote it off against a stout Barcelona tree during practice for the season-closing Spanish GP. 

Mr Vandervell had four of these cars built, picking up Ferrari-style suspension and steering. This quartet of cars was deployed during the 1955 season with drivers Ken Wharton, Harry Schell and Desmond Titterington joining Hawthorn. Schell proved the heart and soul of the team, actually winning four minor British events in the cars, but it became obvious that a lighter, stiffer, more sophisticated chassis frame was required to make the most of the increasingly powerful fuel-injected engine. 

Team transport driver Derek Wootton suggested to team manager David Yorke that a friend of his might be able to help with the new design. His name was Colin Chapman and his Lotus sportscars had been setting new standards in racing. The Old Man met Colin and the silver-tongued young engineer just entranced the rugged old industrialist, who gruffly said “Right – will you do it for me?”.

And so Colin Chapman designed the lightweight multi-tubular chassis which became the now legendary teardrop-bodied Vanwall of 1956-58. The teardrop bodywork itself was created by Colin’s aerodynamicist friend Frank Costin, who had learned his art at De Havilland Aircraft.

Colin retained the 1955 front suspension, wishbones, Ferrari-derived gearbox layout and brakes, but laid out a new de Dion rare axle geometry using Watt link lateral location while retaining the original transverse leaf spring. 

The new cars and team found their feet during 1956 and for 1957 the slender five-leaf transverse leaf spring of the rear suspension would be replaced by a coil spring system with telescopic dampers within each coil. These dampers were German, by Fichtel & Sachs, Vandervell’s engineers having judged British Armstrongs inferior. Engine power was increased after attention from gas-flow expert Harry Weslake – Mahle pistons came from Germany, Porsche synchromesh for the gearbox the same, and the gearbox transaxle unit itself was of course pretty much Ferrari… But all The Old Man wanted to do was to win.

Stirling Moss was free and Vandervell engaged his services to drive the new teardrop Vanwall upon its debut at May Silverstone 1956. In the relatively short-distance Formula 1 race, he won. But he then had to fulfil his new contract for the year – with Maserati. The Vanwalls were campaigned by Maurice Trintignant and Harry Schell. They displayed tremendous straight line speed, and good traction and ‘grunt’ out of slow corners. Vandervell had no sponsors he worried about. He ignored promotional outings and just raced where he felt was important in his vendetta against “those bloody red cars”. Colin Chapman – himself a fine driver – was given a car for the French GP but crashed it in practice as he had a front brake lock, ramming team-mate Hawthorn’s sister car. He wouldn’t get a second drive. 

On race day at Reims 1956, Schell and Hawthorn in their Vanwall teardrops frightened the Ferrari and Maserati opposition. But the cars broke. Reliability had to be found. For 1957 – sixty years ago – the transverse leaf spring rear suspension was replaced by the new ‘Chapman strut’ coil-sprung system, the Fichtel; & Sachs dampers were adopted upon the recommendation of Rudi Uhlenhaut – the celebrated Mercedes-Benz engineer – and the latest spec Vanwall 4-cylinder engines were punching out 285bhp at 7,300rpm on Vandervell Products’ dynamometers. GAV had decided he wanted Moss to drive for him – the last piece in the jigsaw being the bloke in the cockpit…

Stirling memorably tested BRM, Connaught and Vanwall all on the same days at Silverstone – and signed with Vandervell. David Yorke invited Tony Brooks to join as number two. The team passed up the season-opening Argentine GP and concentrated upon perfecting their Vanwall cars before the 1957 season commenced in earnest in Europe. Their season opened with the 1957 Syracuse GP in Sicily on April 7^th, when Moss and Brooks ran 1-2 for some distance ahead of all “those bloody red cars”. One spectator there that day was a gruff, tough Leicester builder named Tom Wheatcroft. He became a committed Vanwall fan that day. Decades later he would own the surviving cars, and build more, for his Donington Collection.

Engine vibration proved a problem. At Syracuse, it broke a fuel injection pipe on Moss’s car and a water pipe on Brooks’s. Rather reluctantly – because he anted to concentrate upon Championship-qualifying Grand Prix races, The Old Man approved entry in the April 22^nd, 1957, Goodwood Easter Monday Meeting. That same savage vibration broke the throttle linkages. His men remembered his demeanour at Acton the following morning, and for days that followed – “He was rampaging around, slamming doors, bawling-out everybody – two races thrown away by a failure we should have pre-empted on the dyno!”. A young man named Stuart Lewis-Evans actually won that race of attrition at Goodwood – in the unpainted ‘Tooth-paste Tube’ Connaught…

Stirling boobed at Monaco, crashing mightily at the chicane on the opening lap. He swears to this day that the brakes failed, but the team mechanics – after examining the wreck – remained unconvinced. Meanwhile, Tony Brooks nursed his Vanwall to the finish – second behind Fangio’s winning ‘Lightweight’ Maserati 250F. Tony recalled how “…my gearchange hand ended up like a plate of raw meat. The Vanwall change was, at best, ummm, agricultural…”. 

The French GP was run at Rouen that year, on July 7^th. Brooks had hurt himself crashing an Aston Martin at Le Mans. Stirling contracted sinusitis after one wipe-out too many while water-skiing on holiday in the South of France. Roy Salvadori and Stuart Lewis-Evans were brought in as substitute drivers. Roy’s performance was pretty anonymous, but Lewis-Evans showed considerable promise. In the non-Championship Reims GP which followed one week later, Lewis-Evans finished third and Salvadori fifth, and GAV signed-up Stuart as a full-time third team driver… And so to the British Grand Prix at Aintree on July 20^th – but more of that as the anniversary approaches of what proved to be the most momentous day in British motor racing history – to be celebrated by us at the imminent Festival of Speed – comes around…

Images courtesy of The GP Library