Richard Attwood

You can almost hear the cognitive whir. Richard Attwood isn’t one given to hyperbole. Opining that victory in the 1970 Le Mans 24 Hours alongside Hans Hermann represented a career peak for the Midlander is met with a positively Gallic shrug. “At the time, it was just another race. I was pleased we won it, but I was already thinking ahead to where I was going to be driving next,” he says not the least bit wistfully. “I think victory meant more to Hans. He was already well into his forties and had missed out on winning by only a few metres a year earlier. He told his wife that he would retire if he won, and he did.”

The Anglo-German pairing famously scored the first of Porsche’s nineteen wins in the endurance classic, all of which was a world away from where Attwood started out eleven years earlier. “I didn’t have a burning ambition to be a racing driver, at least to begin with,” he insists. “My father was keen for me to take up motor sport, which was pretty unusual as you would have thought it would have been the other way around. He had done a bit of racing at Brooklands, and had agencies for Rolls-Royce/Bentley, Aston Martin Lagonda, Vauxhall-Bedford, Jaguar-Daimler, Rover, Land Rover and Standard-Triumph, so it was very much a motoring family. My first car was a Standard 10 to which I added twin-carbs before entering it in a race at Goodwood. That was in 1959.  

“From there, I graduated to a Triumph TR3A. I was an apprentice at Jaguar at the time, and still had no thoughts beyond doing a season of club racing. I got a buzz out of learning my trade, as it were. In many ways, 1960 was the most exciting period of my career in motor sport. I struggled to beat rivals whose TRs had lightweight panels, big carbs and so on, but I won a race at Oulton Park in the wet which was immensely satisfying. I wanted to modify the Triumph for 1961, but my father told me I should do Formula Junior instead. Single-seaters represented a big change from sports cars. He got me a Cooper and, together with friends of the family – Bill Bradley, Jeremy Cottrel, David Baker and Alan Evans [who ran a car for John Rhodes], we raced under the Midland Racing Partnership banner.”

Attwood made an immediate impression, not least at Monaco where his privateer entry finished second to the works Lotus of Pete Arundell in the opening heat of the Grand Prix support race. He was chasing the category benchmark in the final only for his engine to let go. In 1963, he won in the principality aboard an MRP Lola. Despite a leg-breaking shunt at Albi in the second half of the season, Attwood’s star was clearly in the ascendant. He was garlanded with the premier Grovewood Award as the UK’s most promising young driver, but not everyone was happy.

“I think it dawned on my father that I had gone further than he ever expected. There reached a point where he felt I should take an active role in the family business. It was time to stop racing. I decided otherwise, which put a strain on our relationship. It was clear to me that I had potential, and then Raymond Mays offered me a testing contract with BRM for 1964. I did very little testing, though, but I did drive in the Easter Monday News of the World Trophy race at Goodwood. I finished fourth. I was also entered in the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch in the four-wheel drive P67, but it obviously didn’t stand a chance and was withdrawn. I also signed for Ford to do sports cars. I had raced at Le Mans a year earlier with the works Lola GT, and was there at the start of the GT40 programme. I drove a Ford in the 1964 running of 24 Hours alongside Jo Schlesser, who was one of the nicest men I ever met in motor sport. I had done hardly any testing, though, as that had been left to Phil Hill and Roy Salvadori. I think I had done maybe two runs at MIRA. Our car caught fire in the race. I was flat out along the Mulsanne Straight when I saw flames in my mirrors. I managed to stop the car, but couldn’t do anything about putting the fire out. I just watched it burn.”

That same season saw Attwood claim Formula Two honours in the Vienna Grand Prix at Aspern in addition to placing second to Team Lotus’ Jim Clark at Pau. Graduation to the top table was far from preordained, however. “It was clear to me that I was never going to go much further with BRM. I had done one race and little testing, so I decided to leave. Jackie Stewart had just won the European Formula Three title and walked straight into a full-time F1 drive with BRM. I couldn’t see any point in staying, but then Mays came through with a deal whereby I would drive Tim Parnell’s Lotus 25 with a works BRM engine. The engine was new, the chassis anything but. Nevertheless, I qualified sixth at Monaco for my first World Championship Grand Prix start.” Our hero’s race ended after a wheel parted company. “Parnell accused me of clouting the curbs, which I didn’t…”

Despite points finishes in the Italian and Mexican rounds of the World Championship, and F2 honours in the Rome Grand Prix at Vallelunga, pickings were slim for ’66. “The problem with doing well in the junior categories is that you’re expected to continue winning thereafter. You need decent equipment to do that. After Monaco, I was generally at the back of the field in the Lotus. I didn’t do another World Championship round until the 1967 Canadian Grand Prix at Mosport when I had a one-off outing with Cooper. I continued to have good results in F2, and also did well in the Tasman series [including victory in ’66 Gold Leaf Trophy at Levin], but there weren’t any opportunities in F1.

There was always sports cars, Attwood becoming a gun for hire for all manner of factory and privateer squads. “I did the 1966 Le Mans 24 Hours in the Maranello Concessionaires Ferrari P2. The team’s owner, Colonel Ronnie Hoare, was a wonderful chap; very enthusiastic. A year later, I drove his P3/4 alongside Piers Courage who was another lovely man. In 1968, I finally finished my first race at Le Mans alongside David Piper in his trusty 275LM. We were seventh. That year I also drove the Cosworth DFV-engined Ford F3L for Alan Mann Racing. I wouldn’t say that it was an easy car to drive, but it certainly wasn’t as bad as has been made out.”

Then came an offer he couldn’t refuse: a return to Formula One with BRM. “I got the call on the Tuesday before the ’68 Monaco Grand Prix. Mike Spence had been killed at Indianapolis and I was his replacement. Me getting the drive was down to Mays who always wanted British drivers in his cars.” Not that his substitute role was appreciated by everyone, least of all ‘Lord Louis’ Stanley who was married to the sister of Alfred Owen, MD of the Rubery Owen Group and proprietor of the BRM team. “Stanley was an imperious character who thought he held greater sway than he actually did. He asked me why I was there, and I told him. He became incensed because he didn’t know anything about it. I was a proper works driver, but he did everything he could to make out that I was driving for Tim Parnell’s privateer team which by then was running BRMs. I’m surmising that Stanley didn’t think I was good enough.”

Somehow, you expect he felt differently after the race. "Pedro Rodríguez had the new P133 and I was in an old P126. I qualified sixth and he qualified ninth. The track was pretty rough in places, so I worked away with [BRM mechanic] Alan ‘Dobbin’ Challis and got the car handling how I wanted it. We softened the suspension; played around with tyre pressures and so on.” Their hard work paid off. After 80 laps of racing, Attwood came off second to acknowledged Monaco maestro, Team Lotus’ Graham Hill. He claimed a new lap record in the process. “Hill paced himself well. Every time I pushed, he responded. With only a few laps left to run, I really had a go and drove beyond what I had done before, but the BRM was a heavier car than the Lotus 49, and it had less power. I finished 2.2sec behind. I was then hired to do the rest of the season, but I only did five more rounds as Bobby Unser was installed in ‘my’ car for Monza. As it turned out, he wasn’t able to race in Italy due to conflicting schedules. He then failed to qualify for the US GP after blowing up a couple of engines during practice.”

That wasn’t quite the end of the Formula One adventure, however, as the ‘super-sub’ returned to Monaco in 1969 as a Team Lotus driver. “That was another one-off. Jochen Rindt had been injured and I suppose I was viewed as being a safe bet. The Lotus 49 was a revelation after the BRM which felt like a truck by comparison. During the race, the gear knob fell off and started rolling around the cockpit. I was worried that it would get stuck behind the pedals, and the only way I could reach it was under hard acceleration where it rolled rearwards. Eventually, I managed to retrieve it and screw it back into place.” He placed fourth. “After that, I did the German Grand Prix in Frank Williams’ Brabham BT30. I finished sixth, but was ineligible for points because I was competing in the F2 class. That was it as far as single-seaters was concerned.”

The 1969 season did, however, see Attwood become a factory Porsche driver with all that entails. “I finished second in the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch in the 3-litre 908 I shared with Vic Elford. We then did Le Mans together in the flat-12 917 which was far from sorted at that point. It weaved all over the place, and either the back or the front lifted off the ground depending on which part of the circuit you were driving.” The British duo was leading by six laps with four hours to go only for the gearbox to fail. “A year later, I was asked what configuration of car I wanted. I requested a 4.5-litre engine rather than the 5-litre version as I reasoned it would put less strain on the transmission. I also asked for short rather than long-tail bodywork. I was then given the choice of co-driver and I requested Hans because he was a seasoned old pro. I didn’t speak German, and he didn’t speak English, but we got on really well. It rained a lot that year, and there were many retirements. I still maintain that we didn’t so much win as everyone else lost.” What Attwood fails to mention is that they led for fourteen hours. Oh, and he was battling the mumps. 

Second place at the Circuit de la Sarthe in ’71 alongside Herbie Müller, and victory in the Österreichring 1000km race in a Gulf/Wyer 917 shared with Rodríguez, brought the curtain down on his professional career. “I was now married and had a family so it made sense to stop.” Except he couldn’t stay away, and returned trackside in historics in the early 1980s. He even went back to Le Mans in 1984 with Lord Downe’s Nimrod-Aston squad. As he approaches his ninth decade, Attwood is still a contender, witness his pace aboard his BRM P261 during the 2018 Goodwood Revival Meeting. Don’t expect him to hang his helmet up anytime soon. 

This article first appeared in Octane magazine.

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