Original subtitles

Gordon, would you talk?

And Bruce, if you could just nod.

This is the story of a young man from New Zealand who was so successful at driving

cars that he came to Europe to branch out as a professional driver.

As a designer and as a businessman, last year, McLaren

exported racing cars worth one and a quarter million dollars.

He was the first man in the world to drive a

car worth one and a quarter million dollars.

Bruce McLaren, driving in his 100th Grand Prix at the age of only 32.

Bruce storms back to make a sensational McLaren 1-2.

McLaren seems to choose any line in a daring drive rarely seen in motor racing.

McLaren crew chief, Tyler Alexander, looks happy, wouldn't you say?

Bruce, you're competing on the world's motor racing circuits and beating people

who've got far, far more money to spend than you have.

Would you be very much better if you had four or five times as much money to spend?

No, we'd probably get in a terrible mess.

You can't get too big.

You're a racing team and you can get involved and hidebound.

You've got to be able to move quickly if you're going to be competitive.

But the actual care with which pieces are put

together is very important on a racing car.

Something done incorrectly or assembled in a hurry can be very dangerous.

When I was a boy, Mum remembers hearing me telling a fan tale.

When I grow up, I'm going to be a racing car driver.

We're going to talk about Bruce, the human interest side of it really,

which I think is a good idea.

You know what it's like when you meet somebody and there's an instant rapport.

He was a very hands-on person, learning about

the mechanics of cars at his top service.

He had a lot of experience in the service station in the Ramio era.

We learnt how to repair cars, put cars together, build things, make things.

We were always together.

His friendship was simply unconditional.

His sense of humour was never far behind him.

It was like a shadow.

Motor racing was what we lived for.

The world of motor racing.

The world of motor racing.

The world of motor racing.

Bruce's father had a pretty extensive career

in motorsport himself, from the 1930s.

Wives and friends signal drivers how far

they've gone and their position in the race.

Some keen spectators follow the race in the same way, whilst others just watch the

cars go by and wonder why on earth people want to do this sort of thing.

Pop McLaren obviously wanted Bruce to follow in

his footsteps, and Bruce absolutely loved it.

That was always in his mind from the time he was a boy.

And yet he must have been in severe discomfort

most of the time, strapped to that frame.

Bruce had an illness from childhood which had left him crippled.

We called him the crippled kid.

We thought he had polio.

All types of cripples from all over New Zealand.

Comprised of 73 patients at the Wilson Home for Crippled Children at Takapuna,

Auckland.

At nine and a half I contracted Perthes disease.

The ball joined to my left hip was breaking down.

To immobilise the hip they strapped me to a frame and dangled weights from my legs.

The specialist said I'd be laid up for several months.

He lay on that frame for two years.

Never came off it.

Was educated on it and washed and fed on it and the whole lot.

One leg was always shorter than the other.

And he limped badly and couldn't play rugby or cricket like other kids.

Can you hit anything?

Sometimes.

Your piece.

Shoot.

Can I move?

Move?

What the hell ya mean move?

I'm better when I move.

During these formative years, Pop could see Bruce's extraordinary natural ability.

And he'd give us little lessons about lines through corners, things to observe.

Les had always said that when Bruce speaks his times, he becomes the driver.

New Zealand didn't have that many sporting events in those days.

And people would drive anywhere to watch guys hurtling around.

We did a lot of races together, all over the North Island and the South Island.

And then when the Grand Prix, the New Zealand International Grand Prix,

started, that became an extraordinary event.

I mean, there were 70,000 people there on the first day.

The New Zealand Grand Prix was an opportunity for

Bruce to race against the best drivers in the world.

People like Jim Clark, Jack Brabham and Stirling Moss.

These guys were the Spitfire pilots of the 50s and 60s.

The pinup boys.

In New Zealand, racing drivers are regarded with a special sort of awe.

And if they happen to be overseas drivers, the awe develops into hero worship.

That's how I regarded Jack Brabham.

Jack Brabham kept his race car at Pop Service Station.

So he became a friend of the family and Bruce's mentor.

Bruce was an extremely good driver and he had talent that was born in him.

Motor racing is not something you just suddenly learn out of the blue.

You've got to have it inside and you've got to have a feel for it.

And Bruce certainly had all that.

The New Zealand International Grand Prix introduced a scholarship

to get a New Zealand driver to compete internationally.

Well tonight's winner, he started racing as a 15 year old.

This year alone, he's won six out of six sports car

races driving the ex-Jack Brabham bobtail Cooper.

The winner is Bruce McLaren.

Now Bruce, this award allows you to go to England where

you will train and race with the Cooper Car Company.

Bruce was 20 years old.

Mr and Mrs McLaren said, would you go with Bruce as a mechanic helper?

I said, but I'm not a mechanic.

You know, I worked in an automotive parts warehouse for my dad.

Bruce said, you'll learn.

What I was able to do was have it teed up for him to come to the Cooper team.

This is where we build our racing cars and there are literally

hundreds of component parts that go to building a racing car.

John Cooper said, oh there's your car over there and he

looked over it and there was a pile of pipes and a rack.

That's your car there boy, now you'd better start building it.

And he had to set about with Colin Beanland to build the car before he could race it.

And Bruce started his Formula 2 career.

Dear Dad, I wish you could be over here doing this motor racing with me.

I reckon I've inherited something from you.

It's the ability to have a go when the time is right.

Bruce started getting some good placements in races which helped the budget.

He liked the money that he won.

Bruce was an incredibly prolific letter writer

and the boys would record tapes to send back home.

Thanks Pop.

Thank you by the way for that extra cash you sent over.

Fortunately I don't think I'll need it.

The way I'm looking at this season is to get in

as many races this year as possible and do well.

I'm looking forward to Nurburgring very much.

It's a very tough course and if I can finish there I'll be very happy.

It was a combined Formula 1 and 2 race.

Bruce in Formula 2.

The Nurburgring was the most dangerous circuit on the calendar.

They call it the green hell.

Torturous.

Very, very dangerous.

There are several sections where if you're brave enough

you go over the top of a hump and you are flying.

So many different corners.

So many different types of corners.

You know, up a hill, down a hill, off a camber, with a camber, jump twice,

four wheels on the air.

It was a challenge to any driver.

It doesn't matter how much you knew Nurburgring.

Every lap there was a new challenge.

Bruce was sort of unknown at that time.

A new kid.

And he was actually leading the Formula 2 section.

As the race progressed he got into some of the Formula 1 cars and passed them too.

He finished fifth overall.

Won the Formula 2 section of it.

As he drove up back to the pit, he had a grin on his face.

It was, I want to say, like a mile wide.

He was just absolutely elated.

I helped him out of the car and, you know, I think there were tears in both our eyes.

That was really the thing that turned the tide and got international recognition.

He became on the contenders list.

Bruce turned 21 during that year.

He was still in England, but there was a great 21st birthday party at his parents'

house.

Well, hello son.

I hope you've had a wonderful day.

And as Phil said, well, we just hope, just

don't think we're all under a piece of liquor.

We both got homesick, but, you know, the driving force behind the whole thing

was the enthusiasm we had for what we were doing.

Over to Dad.

Hello, Bruce.

Once again, very many happy returns to the day.

I mean, people would love to have done what we did.

The Auckland Car Club used to hold regular club nights.

Pop would take the tape recordings.

At Goodwood, the biggest sort-out between the professional

drivers and the chaps just starting is the fast corners.

On these fast corners, you go round them the first few times, you think,

oh dear, that was near the limit.

But in actual fact, it's not.

It's only time and confidence that enables you to get round the fast corners quick.

Rain was starting to fall, and the whole banking was absolutely treacherous.

We were taking this banking at about 140 miles an hour.

Under the extreme G loading, you had to hang onto the

wheel fairly tight to stop your hands being pulled.

You had to pull down onto the floor of the car.

I think it frightened everybody.

1959 was Bruce's first full season in Formula One.

Towards the end of the year, Coopers were

major contenders for the World Championship.

It certainly looks as though the last Grand Prix of

the season at Seabrook could be the deciding race.

Jack had a very narrow lead over Sterling.

He was the only one who could win the Grand Prix.

My best friend is now on his first Grand Prix.

Bruce was now the youngest driver ever at

just over 22 years of age to win a Grand Prix.

And Jack had won the World Championship.

Oh, that's wonderful.

Now, what are they going to say in Australia when they hear this?

Oh, New Zealand, right?

I don't know what they're going to say in Australia, but

I think they'll be very pleased in New Zealand, Ronnie.

It was a new world for Bruce.

Because now he's recognised.

I remember Bruce saying, I think we're becoming famous.

It was an understatement when you consider what went on for the rest of the year.

Bruce won the opening round of the 1960 World Championship in Argentina.

And on the plane ride back to England, Jack, Bruce and John

Cooper came up with a car that went on to sweep all before it.

Cooper cars have swept the board.

And won the Constructors' Prize.

And Bruce, in his second year with Cooper,

finished second to Jack in the World Championship.

Bruce McLaren was the first New Zealander to really get into Formula One and

establish the fact that a Kiwi could go and do it and

actually make that breakthrough on the world stage.

He was an important figure to all Kiwis.

Bruce came back home every year for the race season.

One of Bruce's heartfelt ambitions was to win the Grand Prix in his hometown.

For many years, motor racing has been a popular sport in New Zealand, attracting

drivers with a taste for thrills and mechanics with a taste for tinkering.

There are car clubs all over the country, and though prize money is not large,

there's nothing small about the amount spent on vehicles.

For the big money and the big names in motor racing, we fly north to Auckland,

our largest city.

Here in January each year is run the New Zealand International Grand Prix.

In the summertime, there was a lot of things to attract

Northern Hemisphere drivers down to New Zealand.

There was not much happening in the northern winter in those days.

New Zealand was a perfect place to come and take up some sunshine, water skiing,

girls.

Enjoying the summer weather with friends are Grand Prix drivers, some of whom have

come halfway round the world for the big race.

An expert water skier, Arnold Glass, is trying

to explain the sport to the English drivers.

At least one of the Englishmen has other interests in mind,

and Arnold's only pupil is New Zealander Bruce McLaren.

After his wobbly efforts, Bruce decides to stick to car racing.

He says it's safer.

In New Zealand, Bruce met a girl from Timaru.

I certainly remember when Bruce first met Patty.

She'd become Miss Caroline Bay.

We met at a dance from memory.

And then I tootled home with my girlfriend and Bruce said he wanted to meet me again.

And he was only there for a couple of days and then off he tootled and kept in touch.

I was 18.

So I always said we had a courtship by letter.

Before we got engaged, we'd seen each other about six times.

I always liked people with brown eyes and dark hair.

He could have been a few inches taller.

Often we would be invited to Bruce's for dinner sometime

in the company of people that weren't motor racing people.

And the whole conversation would finish up with pencils and pieces of paper.

Bruce at heart was an engineer.

He would make models out of balsa wood and stick and string.

And do torsion tests on the kitchen table.

And he would come in the next morning and

show us what he'd drawn and what he'd built.

Bruce Anjak talked about life after Cooper.

Here we had effectively a perfect storm.

The two drivers in the team, not just fantastic drivers, but both capable of

engineering and designing a winning racing car.

Jack Brabham left the Cooper team at the end of

1961 and started construction of his own cars.

The engineer in Bruce must have thought that's

something which I really need to do one day.

How did it go, Bruce?

That was pretty good that time, John.

I think perhaps a bit too much braking on the

back, but apart from that it's nearly perfect.

The Monte Carlo was just magical.

They used to have the film festival the week

before, so all the stars would stay over.

Oh, it was tremendous and we used to travel in a convoy with various other

drivers and we'd stop off at some little motel.

But we had great fun, you know, travelling around together.

In those days, all the drivers were friends with each

other, but they were very determined competitors.

Bruce was now the number one driver at Cooper's.

There was an awful lot of pressure.

All the leading drivers were there.

Jimmy Clark and Graham Hill on the front-rider grid with Bruce.

One, two, three, four, three, two, one, hey!

Graham Hill!

Oh, look at that!

They were spinning that S with a Ferrari!

This was Monaco.

Any driver that can finish at Monaco, in my book, is a hero.

It was a real endurance event.

Two and three quarter-hours, 2,700 gear changes,

hard on the brakes and hard on the steering.

Bruce was in the lead, followed by Phil Hill and the Ferrari.

Phil Hill was closing on Bruce, chasing him down.

Everybody in the Cooper pit got terribly nervous.

Everybody was absolutely ecstatic.

John Cooper more probably than anyone else.

As Bruce said to me later, he said, Phil Hill may have caught up with me,

but there was no way he was going to get past me.

No way.

Coopers had been really brightened up by the Monaco result.

And I don't have to tell you folks, Paddy had a ball meeting Royalty.

Grace and Rainier had a cocktail party.

I was fixated by the emeralds.

The necklace, the earrings, the bracelet, the ring.

And it was just fabulous.

Bruce McLean by then was a jet-set person.

World renowned.

The youngest Grand Prix winner of all time at that time.

Bruce was a superstar.

We had great fun, you know, travelling around together.

Time.

Our life is time, and heartbeats are seconds.

Whatever we do, our preoccupation with time is constant.

Speed doesn't exist for a top racing driver.

Your mind completely synchronizes with the elements that you're competing against.

And one of those elements is speed.

There's an element of danger, but Bruce was such a careful person.

But sadly, motor racing has its share of tragedies.

Over the years, Bruce saw a number of his friends killed.

You're dealing with human beings.

Cars that are put together by human beings so they can brake.

Human beings driving them so they can make mistakes.

Drivers know that sort of thing's on any time they get into a car, really.

It may sound callous, but if you're going to

keep racing, to think on an accident is bad.

It's best to try and forget as soon as possible.

Everything's in slow motion.

You've got plenty of time to brake.

You've got plenty of time to change direction.

Speed only happens when you're having an accident.

To Nürburgring, he had an accident, a high-speed accident.

Bruce, he only remembers waking up in hospital.

I'd once promised myself I'd give up motor racing if I had a major crash.

But I found myself thinking, not yet.

I'd like to start something big.

Run my own outfit.

Bruce was preparing for the future.

Bruce was the great student in that university which was Cooper's.

He had a voracious appetite for information.

That burning curiosity and intelligence.

He had the ability to think big.

When Jack Brabham left, it became very obvious that Cooper's didn't want drivers

being involved in design or in the drawing of us.

And that's where Bruce's passion lay.

Bruce, as an engineer, could see that Cooper's best days were behind them.

This was the start of his plan to get his own full team together.

Jack said it's difficult, but if you want to do it, go for it.

I think the first thing I did for Bruce, apart from...

I mean, I painted him several times.

Of course, winning races.

But he asked me to design a badge for the then embryo McLaren racing team.

This tatty old ledger came to light recently.

I've got an entry here.

Designing badge for Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Limited.

For use on racing cars, transports, redheads, lapel badges.

39 pounds.

He said, you know, can you design a badge that is relevant to a New Zealand team?

It's a badge of his heritage in New Zealand.

OK, Kiwi racing car, name of the team, a badge.

Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Team.

Bruce McLaren Motor Racing was first formed to race in New Zealand.

In the Cooper workshop in England, Bruce and I had built a car specially to

win the New Zealand Grand Prix from the ground up.

The car was, for all intents and purposes, a McLaren car.

But because he was still contracted to and driving

for Cooper, then it made sense to call it a Cooper.

But it was really Bruce's deal.

Cooper copied our car and built a second car for Timmy Mayer.

Timmy Mayer was a young American driver, Bruce's teammate and, to some extent,

protege.

Timmy was a very approachable young fella.

He'd done very well in England, a former junior.

With his brother, Teddy, as his team manager.

It was the New Zealand Grand Prix.

This was what we were here for.

Away goes the field of crack drivers on their high-speed journey of 150 miles.

The

win in a car that Bruce and I had designed and built ourselves was just tremendous.

Lots of hugs all round.

It was a huge effort.

But, as you learn in motor racing, the highs and lows were enormous.

In practice at Longford, the last race of the series, Timmy

talked to Bruce about a hump in the road just prior to a corner.

Because Timmy felt that he was braking

before it and could possibly brake after it.

And Bruce said, yes, you can brake after it, but be very careful.

Timmy went out and never came back.

The vehicle landed a little sideways into a tree.

The car was virtually broken in two behind the

cockpit and, you know, it just killed him instantly.

That was really our first tragedy.

This was the first time that it struck so close to home.

When you speak to somebody, and they're minutes before and

they're no longer with you, it affects you quite deeply.

But there was a race the next day.

And the team turned up.

And we raced the next day.

They seriously talked about Bruce not racing,

but decided, you know, we must carry on.

This is our business.

This is what we do.

At Timmy's funeral, the eulogy Bruce wrote really

was the mantra that the team followed from then on.

The news that he had died instantly was a terrible shock to all of us.

But who's to say that he had not seen more, done more, and learned more in his

26 years than many people do in a lifetime?

To do something well is so worthwhile that to

die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy.

There would be a waste of life to do nothing with one's ability.

I feel that life is measured in achievement, not in years alone.

At the end of that Tasman series, we went back to

England, not quite sure what the future was going to hold.

Ian Young actually called me up and said, Bruce is here, wants to talk to you.

Bruce came on the line and said, I'm expanding my team.

Would you like to come and work for me?

He wanted to hire more Kiwis.

Oh yes please, thank you very much, I'll do that.

New Zealand mechanics were very innovative.

They had learned how to build cars in our little

country, where it was very difficult to get past.

And so they could make completely new components.

You know the old saying, if you give a Kiwi a length

of number eight fencing wire, he'll make anything.

So he liked that attitude.

Because that's how he was.

Bruce McLaren now had a team, but didn't have a workshop.

Our tow car had a rusty old trailer.

And Ian Young was sent out urgently to try and find us a workshop.

In retrospect, it was terrible.

It was very small, but in fact it suited us perfectly at the time.

What he came up with was the corner of a large industrial

garage that was used for servicing earth moving machinery.

With what was virtually a dirt floor.

It probably had been concrete once, but with all

the bulldozers moving around, it was broken up.

Bruce McLaren Motor Racing in England started in a very grotty shed.

Well, that ought to do it.

Money.

It takes an awful lot of money to run a team.

Mechanics, drivers, transportation.

Bruce was up against Lotus, Maserati, and of course, Coupes and Ferrari.

There was a payroll to meet every week.

Bruce was asked to drive big American sports cars, particularly as a test driver.

Ford used Bruce a lot because they appreciated his technical ability.

With his engineering background, Bruce could drive the car and he could

tell the engineers exactly what was happening.

Bruce needed the money from Ford.

There was no money in Formula One.

The McLaren team really was being financed doing testing,

and we'd do anything up to three, four hundred miles a day.

There wasn't a lot of money at the time.

They did a lot of tyre testing for Firestone, which paid good money.

Just wonderful experience.

So I knew Bruce quite well by the time I started working for him.

These were guys.

None of them had hit 30.

And they were full of enthusiasm, full of innovations, and they were smart.

We all spoke his language.

We all shared his humour.

And we were all totally dedicated to him.

He worked along with us.

He didn't stand there and issue instructions.

He would be there with his sleeves rolled up.

I think now the cars like the big GT cars, which we drive at

Le Mans, Nürburgring and so on, they'll do 200 miles an hour.

And they also accelerate like mad.

They spin the wheels.

You can't keep full throttle all the time.

And this is a lot more fun.

Bruce decided sports car racing might be the

way to go for the fledgling McLaren team.

He'd heard of a car that was for sale in America called the Xeric Special.

Teddy Mayer was back in America with his life in

tatters because of the death of his brother, Timmy.

And Bruce said, well, how would you like to try

and buy this car for me and come to England?

We chopped the chassis up.

Put an Oldsmobile engine into it.

Big stack exhaust pipes so it looked like something from Mars.

Shrewd on a plane took it to Canada and won at Northport.

Bruce McLaren from Oslo, New Zealand gets the checkered flag.

We in Europe were racing for peanuts.

And for us to go to America and see the sort

of money that was available was mind-blowing.

With his new team, Bruce needed management.

What about our mechanical needs of taking the nuts off?

Like Tyrell's air wrenches.

Bad idea.

Teddy Mayer was a lawyer.

He became the business brains of the operation.

He took one look around the workshop and said, God damn, he can't work here.

And so Ian Young was sent out again.

Ian Young got us what was a really upmarket workshop in Feltham.

It was 10,000 feet, the ideal place to start up.

It had lots of windows.

And a good concrete floor.

And nice work benches.

And even an office.

And Bruce decided to start with a clean sheet of paper.

And we would build the first ever McLaren.

This year we decided that the car that would probably win would be a lightweight

car powered by a relatively big American engine.

The McLaren M1.

Bruce basically sketched with a piece of

chalk on the floor what we were going to do.

It was instantaneous stuff.

There was no time to draw it.

The chap would come in at night and say, what have you made today?

I said, oh, well, I've just made a couple of wishbones here.

Just draw those.

I had an office with a sign on the door that said, don't knock.

We don't have that sort of time.

Bruce was famous for just waving his arms and

saying, well, you know, just make it like this.

Whoosh, you take some tubes and bonk, you've got a chassis.

That was one of Bruce's favorite terms, just whoosh, bonk.

And of course that stuck.

Then everything was whoosh, bonk after that.

But it was anything but whoosh, bonk.

The day we wheeled it out of the workshop, painted black

with a silver stripe and a little Kiwi badge on it.

It was a very, very proud moment for all of us New Zealanders.

Bruce went off to America to run that car.

And you'd kind of pack up and become gypsies.

You know, you'd find space, somebody's garage,

some dealership, whatever to work out of.

Spare parts that have to come from England.

It was a lightweight car, very much like a formula car in Europe.

It created a huge amount of attention.

The Americans at the time were running heavy cars, incredibly heavy.

Bruce was nimble and he could duck and dive and

weave amongst all these great big heavy monsters.

Phones started to ring and people started to ask, how can we get one of these cars?

Oh, that car is something else.

Yeah.

Would you like to drive it?

Hmm.

At least you got yourself a deal.

I'm glad you like the car.

Dad, we're pretty pleased the way things are going.

We could have sold 30 sports cars this year if they'd been available.

A lot easier than winning races, let me tell you.

We've got a way to go before we understand aerodynamics on these sports cars,

but I guarantee we know more than anyone else.

The big excitement has been in Formula One.

But we're keeping that very quiet.

There at the end of the runway is Concorde 001, and in for loose is John Dragonback.

Just seconds to go.

Bruce said to me, you know, we really need a full-time

designer, because he was flat out all the time.

So I said, I've got this friend called Robin Hurd, who

works on the Concorde, but he'd love to design racing cars.

I'd been three years out of university and I was working at Farnborough, which is the

headquarter of the British aircraft industry.

When Bruce says to a 25-year-old, come and design my first Formula One car,

you either say, yep, I'll do that, and risk the biggest cock-up of all time,

or no, you throw away the opportunity of a lifetime.

Robin was aware of all these materials that we didn't know anything about.

And one of the products was called Malite.

I did a sort of latest aircraft technology version of a

Formula One car, using honeycomb, double-skin and bonding.

Bruce took it with great enthusiasm.

The letters to Dad were full of technical stuff.

The first Malite car, there's pictures of the

tub and little drawings of what he was doing.

Of course, Dad just lapped up every word.

It was a very tedious vehicle to build.

We would be working on the car come midnight.

We would probably be working on the car all night.

When you've just been working 12 or 14 hours a

day, week after week, there's a bit of tension.

When somebody was welding and couldn't see, we would fill a 20-cigarette packet

with oxygen acetylene, mixed at exactly the right

ratio, and we just slid it until it got to the flame.

It was a real loser.

I mean, it scared the pants off of people.

You know, Bruce took all those things in his stride.

Bruce was always one of us.

Very much one of the boys.

When he built a new car, as soon as it was on a jig, he would get into it and pretend

to drive it and make engine noises and steer

it, and go, oh, boy, this is going to be quick.

And everybody would go, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really good fun.

They built a jig to build a mallet chassis with.

There was a piece of coal-drawn steel tube, about a four-inch diameter,

and I always realised this would make a wonderful gun barrel.

We decided we'd make an acetylene, oxygen acetylene cannon.

The cap was welded in the end, and then a little box and a spark plug fitted.

Fortunately, I did a pretty good job of

welding it, not realising what we were doing.

Robin Hood was, you know, an object of fun.

I don't know what we were thinking.

There was a sense of humour to everything.

They seemed to accept me.

He used to come to work at nine o'clock or something.

We would have already been at work for quite some time.

Drawing of his doors at the top of the stairs.

The way that Robin got in the office, so this gun was set up.

Pipe cans was a perfect fit.

Pointed towards the door.

And it was far more successful than we expected.

It went right through the door.

He suddenly had this door fly inside.

We were all organised to stow the gun instantaneously.

It was wang under the bench.

Everything was out of sight.

What?

Bang?

Did you hear a bang?

It was typical of New Zealand, and by then, McLaren's sense of humour.

6am.

Daughter, eight pounds, brown hair.

Amanda Lee.

Both fine.

Father, poorly.

We've certainly been very lucky.

Little Amanda Lee is as perfect as we could have wished for.

I'm bringing them home and picking up the nurse on Tuesday.

I don't go to Nassau until Wednesday afternoon.

He coped with it wonderfully.

I think I had to do more coping.

Well, you have to, if you're going to have a successful marriage.

And whatever comes along, you take in your stride.

Because he was away a lot of the time.

1966 was Bruce McLaren's first year as a Formula One constructor.

Bruce, above all, wanted to win in Formula One, to the extent that he got hold of

numbers one and two, the numbers that go on the car, Chris and himself.

Chris Amon was going to be running the backup car.

It never happened.

I never got to do any races at all because the engine was a disaster.

Bruce put an Indianapolis Ford engine into the back of his Formula One car.

It made a fantastic noise, but just had no speed at all.

Dear folks, it's been so long since I've

written, I guess you must wonder what's going on.

The last few months have been a little difficult.

For the first time ever, we've had a major setback.

The F1 season is over, and we've certainly lost a few people.

We've only had a failure.

It's hard to keep up the spirits of the team.

The team stuck at it as they do, but, you know, with that engine,

there was no hope, which was a real blow.

I've been feeling a bit of pain lately.

Just one question, Bruce.

The doc asked, do I get headaches, and I said yes.

Quite possibly due to the curve in your spine.

Due to the pelvis not being square when I stand.

Your left leg being...

shorter than your right.

For a more permanent solution, there's a rather radical procedure that we

can do, in which we replace the head of your femur with a steel one.

He sent me to have an X-ray, and when I looked at them, I was a little shaken.

The right was a butte ball and socket, and the left was a tatty old thing.

Quite normal Perthes disease recovery, he said.

But it shook me a bit.

His short leg and the pain it caused him, to him personally, was a great problem.

It was never talked about.

It was never ever considered to be of anybody else's concern but his.

But it was his reality.

Bruce, you need a lift.

This is Le Mans.

Home of the most famous road race in the world.

Through his contacts with Ford, Bruce was contracted to drive at Le Mans.

It was a race that was never done before.

McLaren had been commissioned by Ford to build a special version of the GT40.

I first met Bruce about 1966.

We were testing and developing with Ford.

We used to kid around because he had a bit of a limp,

and he had to have the clutch pedal closer to him.

And I said, you know what?

I said, I keep hanging my shins on that.

You know, stupid things.

But that's what friends do.

I was in good hands with Bruce.

I wanted to learn as much as I could because Bruce was an artist.

I loved the way he would rotate the car.

And there was a finesse to that.

To be able to extract every ounce of what this machine is capable of.

A machine that can hurt you.

You took that GT40 from a vehicle that was dangerous at 190

to a car that was going 214 or so miles an hour hands-off.

Bruce had contributed a lot of his expertise to the

program, and Fords were pretty dominant at that time.

The mind was really the big objective.

Henry Ford had decided he wanted to win it and it didn't matter what it took.

There wasn't a budget constraint like we all had in Formula One.

Bruce and I teamed up as Ford drivers.

I guess it became natural to put the two Kiwis together.

Having a chance to win them all was huge.

The race always started at 4 o'clock in the afternoon

and finished at 4 o'clock the following afternoon.

Bruce started the race.

He sprinted across the track, one leg shorter than the other.

In those days, those cars, you couldn't drive them flat out for 24 hours.

But Bruce said, you know, we've got nothing to lose.

Let's give it everything.

And that's exactly what we did.

We just drove it flat out.

Headlight beams pick out the advertising signs in high relief.

The long, lonely night of endurance lies ahead.

As daylight dawned on a Sunday, the Fords were in a very strong position.

Ford made the decision, well, we're first, second and third, we'll have a dead heat.

When the decision came to slow us down, I can remember Bruce being really annoyed.

Bruce did the last stint.

I'll never know whether Bruce put his foot down or Ken Miles

backed off, but Bruce crossed the line clearly in front.

Suddenly, you know, we're standing up on the podium with Henry

Ford, and we've won one of the most famous races that exists.

We've just won Le Mans.

People on the street, they own a Ford, and Bruce was driving a Ford.

They'd say, McLaren, that's the guy that won Le Mans.

It impressed so many people.

It was a huge PR boost.

Bruce's entire racing operation at that time was really aimed at the Can-Am series.

Can-Am is the Canadian-American Challenge Cup, and that series consisted of

unlimited engine, unlimited almost everything, so

that people could be very innovative with their cars.

Well, this is Mossport, and I'm Bruce McLaren.

What do you think was your biggest break?

The creation of the Can-Am series was very good for us in that just at the stage

where we were starting to concentrate on sports car racing,

sports car racing became a very big thing in the US.

I started as a racer.

I was the race queen, if you will, with flags and the jumping.

I hear those engines, and I'm, whoa.

I would go around with this camera all the time.

They'd do the driver's parade.

They'd all wave at me when they go by, like a family.

Got to meet Bruce and became friends.

I love the way he always said, she be right, mate.

Bruce had a good team, and he was trying to raise enough money so he could spend

enough money to stay on the cutting edge of racing car development.

McLaren's design mastery was very much in evidence.

13 of his streamlined models were in the race.

The McLaren was the class of the field.

I was so envious, wishing so much as if I

could just drive one of those things myself.

McLaren brand cars appealed to me.

It was smooth and it looked good, so that inspired me.

Charging up the back straight, McLaren makes 165 miles an hour look easy.

I met Lothar, and Lothar raced a Cobra for a while, but when he saw the McLaren...

I sold my Cobra.

I sold my house.

I bought the McLaren.

Bruce McLaren was very important to me, and what

he started with the McLaren team was tremendous.

It was a great couple of years of my life.

But I was approached to meet Mr Ferrari.

Bruce was very disappointed, because I think he was thinking

about stopping racing himself and just running the team.

Well, Bruce, you're so busy on the construction side and the management side,

are you planning to retire from racing yourself and

devote seven days a week to construction and management?

Not just yet.

I imagine that in a couple of years or so I will do this.

But at this stage, it's still necessary for me to do the driving.

In 67, we spent three months just building these Can-Am cars to go to the States.

That's all we did.

It was just mad activity.

We needed to win to earn the prize money to

be able to afford to do our Formula One car.

I don't know how they scream, but they break through all those years.

I guess Teddy basically put a lot of money in it on the early days.

The Formula One failure hit Teddy's wallet very bad.

It was one thing for the sponsors to say, yes, we'll stick with you.

But they had to have a reason for sticking with us.

The McLaren team has built a completely new Can-Am car for 1967.

It's the M6A.

Bruce's new teammate is fellow New Zealander Dennis Holm.

Where are you finding that extra speed?

I would say largely with our car on acceleration coming out of the corners.

So you don't expect any trouble in the race?

Well, I always expect trouble.

I just hope we don't have any.

At Mossport, the race was going to start.

Bruce said, look, we've got a problem.

New Zealander Bruce McLaren, who qualified second, is not on the grid.

Minutes before the cars were lined up, the McLaren mechanics discovered a leaky

fuel bag and are feverishly working to replace it, but time is running out.

Teammate Dennis Holm will carry the McLaren banner.

Dan Gurney in the second row will be his major threat.

The field is off for one tour around the two and a half mile course without McLaren.

And then the American store person has to do something special.

McLaren is off, flat out.

To play catch up is a tough way to go racing.

McLaren almost a lap behind as the pack gets the green flag.

Bruce McLaren is 55 seconds behind.

Dennis Holm in the number five McLaren leads Gurney to the deceptive downhill

season and blasts for the start-finish straight in green.

Holm and Gurney are setting a blistering pace.

Five

places in just five laps.

Spring

drive rarely seen in motor racing.

Gurney and the sensational Bruce McLaren battle for second.

McLaren now in second.

He's

done serious damage to the bodywork.

Incredibly, Denny holds on to win.

Bruce storms back to make it a sensational McLaren one-two.

Every racing driver likes the other.

Even though Bruce was really wanting to try and wind down, he loved racing,

he loved driving, and he was still good at it.

Bruce needed another driver in Formula One.

Quite clearly, Bruce and Denny got on very well.

They were Kiwis taking on the world.

Please don't mind them.

Denny had a foot in both camps, as it were.

He was driving with Jack Brabham in Formula One.

The Formula One season ended up with Denny becoming world champion.

Bruce won the Can-Am Championship.

Denny was second.

The longer we went, we got stronger together, and Bruce decided that there'd

be a place for me in his Formula One team, his new Formula One team.

Oh, it's beautiful.

I don't like thick ones.

I do.

I'm with you.

Yeah, but you've got to play up in the fans, don't you?

A Formula One car was designed.

The M7.

Rob and her designed the chassis.

The car was a success right from the start.

We were starting to look very good.

And then in 1968, Bruce made history at Spa.

Spa is a very, very long race.

Very high speed.

Fuel consumption is absolutely critical.

Spa was a bit like Monaco.

Sometimes only three or four cars would finish.

Danny was very competitive.

He was second right from the start.

Bruce was running sixth or seventh, making his way up the field.

And Danny got into the lead.

And then the next thing, there he is in the pits.

Pits stopped.

What's wrong?

Drive shafts melted off the side of the gearbox.

But Bruce's car was running particularly well.

Towards the end of the race, he'd worked himself

up into second place behind Jackie Stewart.

Tyler was out there with a pit board to Bruce, waving furiously.

Telling him to go faster and faster because

there was every chance he could catch Jackie.

On the last lap, unbeknown to Bruce, Jackie Stewart's car stopped out of fuel.

But he didn't see Jackie run out and he crossed the line.

As far as Bruce was concerned, he'd finished second.

And we were trying to say to him, you've won, you've won, you've won.

You've won the race.

Oh, I just thought it was fantastic.

Absolutely fantastic.

And he deserved it.

Bruce had now won Formula One and Grand Prix in a car

of his own design and manufacture, bearing his name.

And it was just a major step forward for the race team.

It is so appropriate that the first ever win for a McLaren

and a Formula One car, was with Bruce McLaren at the wheel.

And it was the second time in history that a driver

won a Grand Prix with his name on the nose of the car.

And it's never happened since.

Well, I'd said to Bruce, you know, when we first started over here eight or

nine years ago, and we dreamed about doing something on our own.

We didn't know how long it would take, when we could do it, but we've done it.

Here in the cul-de-sac, right under the flight path of London Airport,

is the home of one of the most successful areas of British motor racing.

David Ode was a very basic kind of English industrial estate.

To us at the time, it seemed like this was very grand, but...

Every 80 seconds, we had a jet land over the top of us.

And of course, if you're on the telephone, you just had to stop talking.

Just say, excuse me a minute.

We're just going to wait for 60 seconds.

And it's right there.

It's the building of our great city.

Having the factory so close to the airport suited Bruce fine.

He was constantly in the air.

He was able to jump off the plane at the airport, get to David Road, have a few

meetings, and be back on the plane within minutes.

Bruce and Denny spent a lot of time in

airplanes back and forth across the Atlantic.

The drivers, Bruce and Denny's involvement was split between

a Can-Am weekend and then a Formula One weekend in Europe.

They'd fly in on the Thursday, because the jet

lag was quite bad between England and the US.

And we'd run Friday.

And then Saturday, practice and qualifying, and then race on Sunday.

Team McLaren earned more than $162,000 in prizes for the series.

Bruce must have been something of a workaholic.

There was this great need for him to be busy.

I'm not sure when he ever found time to sleep.

Bruce also did have big plans to manufacture street cars, road cars.

I remember the prototype coupe that he built.

We were in England setting up to get delivery of our next McLaren.

When we were in the office, he showed us this model that was there, the GT that he

wanted to build, because that was his dream.

We would like to do a road car in the future,

and we're talking about it and thinking about it.

Some way down the line, I hope it happens.

That road car really was Bruce's baby.

All the neighbours came out when he very

quietly tried to drive it out of the garage.

I only drove it briefly and wanted to show off when he had a cocktail party.

Tenths of a second on lap time.

This really keeps you working.

Cars were becoming increasingly more powerful, and designers were trying to

find ways of creating downforce to keep the cars

on the track, on fast corners in particular.

And cars started sprouting wings.

Aerofoil section, put it on struts, took it on the back of the car,

put something on the front to balance it out, and

it gives more downforce and therefore more grip.

You know, aerodynamics has come a long way since those days of us putting a wing on a

minivan and measuring the downforce with bathroom scales.

For the 69 season, the car was designated M8B.

This was the car that we ran a high-wing

configuration with struts down onto the uprights.

That proved to be unbeatable.

Group 7, the fastest racing cars in the world.

Champions McLaren and Holm drive these cars to win on Golf Premium No-Knock.

If McLaren and Holm...

The success of Bruce McLaren and Danny Holm in Can-Am was extraordinary.

In 1969, there were 11 rounds of the Can-Am Championship.

McLaren's won all 11 of them.

Every race.

Holm won five, McLaren won six.

It's just unbelievable.

He was bringing home buckets of cash.

Lots of other race team owners made themselves rich and beggared their teams.

Bruce had it the right way round.

Put your money and your effort into your race team and then when it's really

winning, then you can live off the high life.

So, we've finished building the house in Walton-on-Thames.

Three-quarters of an acre.

Mum, you'll love it, I'm sure.

I'm happy.

It's a real family home.

We've called it Muriwai.

When you talk to anybody that's there to hide, it has to be all-consuming.

It has to be your total life.

It was like working in a circus.

The circus would go to America or the circus would go to Mexico or South Africa.

And you would turn up at the racetrack and be the same tyre people and the same fuel

people and all the other same team members and

you hadn't seen each other for three weeks.

It was just like a small community that had moved around the world.

New Zealander Bruce McLaren driving in his hundredth Grand Prix at the age of only 32.

Each year, it gets a little harder to keep everything as neatly and as nicely

controlled as we did in previous years because there's just that much more

administration, there's that much more to go wrong.

We had grown very quickly in the space of two or three years.

Bruce was so busy that I would sort of wave to him as he passed in the factory.

There was always a rush to get the Formula One cars built for the January,

February start and then Can-Am didn't start until June.

Resources were fairly stretched.

Not a huge team of people at all.

Maybe 50 guys working on Can-Am, Formula One and Indianapolis cars as well.

People say the three big races in motorsport are the Monaco Grand Prix,

Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500.

The Indy 500 is arguably the best snow race in the world.

I suppose it was logical for a workaholic to

look at Indianapolis as the next thing to tackle.

Yeah, he was building an empire.

Dear folks, two Indy cars went off last night and Denny, Chris Amon, Teddy and I

should be running at Indianapolis on Monday morning.

Nobody in the team other than Denny really had any experience of the place.

Very early on in the month, Denny's car caught fire going down the back straight.

Denny's overalls were on fire but because it

was methanol you couldn't see any flame burning.

And Denny ended up getting his hands badly burnt which put a stop to his drive.

In fact, he ended up in hospital.

We were scheduled for a test with the Can-Am car.

The entire month of May had been a massive intersection of all of our projects.

Formula One, Indianapolis and Can-Am was almost too much for one man and I think

he'd come to the realisation that he was going to lose.

He was going to need to step away from some driving.

And I suppose perhaps Paddy had an influence on that as well, understandably.

Well, he'd just arrived back from America the day before from Indianapolis.

Denny should have been testing the car because

of Bruce just being back and jet lagged.

But Denny couldn't drive.

The design side of the car hadn't changed a lot.

How are you going to do a lot better than 11 out of 11 wins anyway?

The main change came about through banning high wings.

There were so many accidents in Formula One with the high wings

that the Americans followed suit and banned them at the end of the year.

Kerry Taylor and myself were at Goodwood and

they were exploring rear wing configurations.

They had a wing section hung between fins on the tail

for the first time and this generated huge problems.

Huge amounts of downforce.

We were testing there with a Formula One car and a

Can-Am car and he was climbing from one car to the other.

He was in a great frame of mind and I always remember he'd

been to see the Sundance kit film and it took his fancy.

He was pretty impressed by that.

Ready?

You're a real chump.

And you always stop at midday at Goodwood for lunch.

The aero club insists.

But Bruce wanted to do one more run.

And he wanted to use some more rear wing.

There was a bit of a frantic get the car out to get just

another lap in to evaluate this particular adjustment.

You can hear those cars, a V8 running about

6,000 revs and those were monstrous engines.

All of a sudden it's just and a silence.

Jim Stone and I jumped in my car and drove around and I lifted him out of the car and

it was obvious to me that he was dead because

he was broken and he was like a rag doll.

And so I held on to him.

I sat there and held him until the ambulance came

and then the ambulance people took him off me.

It wasn't too long before I had a phone call.

And it was a tragic accident and we had lost Bruce.

So being what we were we took the broken car and put it

in the truck and I drove the truck back to the factory.

I had to tell Patty what had happened.

A couple of the people from McLaren's just came to the house.

I think one's in a state of shock for such a long time.

Amanda obviously was little so she wasn't totally aware of it.

I said to Denny, let's just go outside.

So we went outside and walked around the lawn and the garden in Bruce's house.

I realised I would have to call Bruce's parents in New Zealand.

And it was now after midnight there.

Pop answered the phone and it was just so difficult.

To tell them what had happened.

I spoke to Pop.

I spoke to Mrs Mack.

And Mrs Mack said, you know, I had a dreadful premonition

this morning that something was going to happen.

And I sat up suddenly in bed, just bolt upright and Lee said, what's the matter?

That whole day's come back Roger.

It's a...

You build a pretty close relationship with a driver.

He's got to trust you.

And...

Yeah.

Yeah.

Very sad day.

I wanted the boys to carry on and I wrote a letter to the team.

The boys as I always called them.

My boys.

What happened should never have.

At say 180 mile an hour with the rear wing set at a

fairly high angle the rear section of the car lifted.

Unfortunately there was a marshals post due for demolition hadn't been demolished

right in the path of the car.

Teddy and I decided we would get everybody in the

factory together and we said to them, take tomorrow off.

The next day everyone turned up.

You know, we decided to carry on.

I mean, that's what he would have wanted us to do.

Ian Young, Paddy McLaren and myself would fly out to New Zealand for his funeral.

The funeral procession We had one session left to drive to the cemetery.

At every intersection there was a traffic officer making sure the lights were

overridden so that the cortege was never going to be slowed down.

All of the traffic officers stood to attention and saluted as we went through.

We

got a huge photograph of Bruce and we put it up on

the far wall of the factory in the prototype shop.

Denny was there virtually every day other than

the days that he had to go and see the specialist.

And he took over the mantle of team leader.

At the back of everyone's mind of course was here we are

due to be on Mossport first Can-Am race June the 14th.

Within two weeks.

And so another car had to be built very quickly

if we were a functioning motor racing team.

They quickly designed a whole new system of

struts to hold the bodywork in the rear wing.

Denny said I'm going to drive at Mossport because he said

we've got to be there with two cars and we said no you're not.

You can't Denny the doctors have all said to you that you know your hands are so bad.

Denny certainly made it very obvious that come what may he was driving.

The immediate thoughts was who can we approach to drive the second car.

The McLaren team is here dedicated to winning in the memory of their boss.

Dan Gurney a close friend of Bruce's has volunteered to drive the second McLaren.

I drove a Can-Am car for a McLaren under the

worst sort of circumstances when Bruce left us.

I felt as though my old friend would probably

be honored if I could do well and so I said yes.

He joins Denny Holm whose hands have been badly burned in testing for the Indy 500.

Against doctor's orders and with his hands heavily bandaged.

Denny will race.

So on the grid at Mossport there's Denny with extremely painful burnt hands and

then that left hand went onto the wheel and we had to

sort of mold it around the wheel so he could hold on.

Unbelievably the doctors at Mossport allowed him to start.

Denny led for most of the way until he had gearbox problems.

Dan won the race.

Denny finished third.

It was a great opportunity to do something for Bruce to keep things going.

McLaren went from success to success.

Denny won the Can-Am Championship in 1970.

We won the Indy 500.

And the new M16 with Mark Donoghue.

In 1974 we achieved our ultimate goal.

We won the Formula One World Championship with Emerson Fittipaldi.

We won the Indy 500 with the Works car with Johnny Rutherford.

Repeated that in 1976 with James Hunt in Formula One.

Johnny Rutherford again at the Indy 500.

And McLaren became the only team in history to have completed the World

Championship Indy 500 double for two years.

The legacy of Bruce McLaren lives on.

And it's not set in stone.

The legacy of McLaren lives on.

The legacy of McLaren lives on.

I've always said that if Bruce had come into the factory one morning and said okay

men, because he always addressed us collectively as men, okay men,

we're not going to work on racing cars today.

We're going to march across the Sahara desert.

We'd have all said okay Bruce, no problem.

I remember when I was young, My first actual race, it was on a beach.

I had a plastic

certificate which says, the steroid declares that P.

McLaren won a up to 1500cc all-comers handicap race.

But I was certainly excited by it.

They tell me that there have been quite a few

modifications carried out on this car of yours.

What would some of those modifications be?

I believe for a start that you're using a bamboo space frame.

That's correct.

It's a bamboo space frame.

And we're also using the most sensational development as of course the square wheels.

That gives us more tread area when the car is going sideways.

That's tread area on the ground as you must of course understand.