Taylor Simon - Murray Walkers Formula One Heroes

CONTENTS

Murray Walker combines an encyclopaedic knowledge of Grand Prix racing with an unbridled fanaticism that remains undimmed after more than half a century of race commentaries.

In his personal tribute to the sport, he celebrates the most talented drivers of all time, the rivalries that have set his pulse racing and the circuits he finds the most inspiring.

This updated edition of Murray Walkers Formula One Heroes gives an in a nutshell appraisal of legends old and new from an esteemed hero and genuine F1 insider who, even now hes retired, cannot keep his all-consuming passion off the page.

Murray Walker, OBE, is the indisputable Voice of Formula One. He has been broadcasting for over 50 years, becoming in the process a much-loved household name.

Simon Taylor has been a racing journalist for more than 40 years, BBC Radios motor racing correspondant and an ITV commentator on modern and historic motor racing.

I GUESS IT is true to say that my addiction to motor sport is an inherited genes thing. For would I have had this passion if Id been the son of a plumber? Who knows, but I doubt it.

My beloved father, Graham Walker, was a kind, generous, cheerful and friendly man with a wonderful way with words and a personality the size of a house. In World War One he was a despatch rider. Thereafter he made a very healthy living racing motorcycles for some 15 years, and was a truly great competitor. Riding for Norton, Sunbeam and Rudge-Whitworth all now sadly just memories from Britains great two-wheeled racing past he won the Isle of Man TT when it mattered more than all the other top races put together. He was the first home in many international Grands Prix, captained the winning British team in the prestigious International Six Days Trial (in which I was, much later, proudly to win a Gold Medal myself), and was one of the greatest motorcycling all-rounders the world has ever seen.

All this was happening from the time I was born in 1923 until only a few years before I left school. So, growing up in my famous fathers shadow, I was likely either to love or to loathe motor sport. Actually, I was fairly unaffected by my unusual childhood because his dramatic occupation didnt strike me as being anything out of the ordinary. It was just what he did.

But the bug had bitten. All those idyllic holidays in the Isle of Man, Ulster, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Germany, Spain and France watching my dad winning races and being the hero of the crowds had their effect. When World War Two ended I left the army and took up motorcycle racing myself, in the fond belief that Id show the Old Man how it should really be done.

Wrong! I wasnt nearly good enough, and anyway I was preoccupied with trying to build a successful career in the advertising business. So, after winning a heat at Brands Hatch (then an anti-clockwise grass track) on a 250cc AJS, I gracefully retired at the top of my inadequate form to comply with the old adage, Those that can, do. Those that cant, talk about it!

Again I was following in my fathers footsteps, for when he left the saddle he became a great broadcaster whose radio commentaries from the TT course that he knew so well were the stuff of legend. For the 14 years until his death in 1962 we were the BBCs motorcycle commentary team and, in time, that led to my becoming its Formula One man.

But not for quite a while. Until 1978 I was primarily a bike chap who was also a gigantic car racing enthusiast. Motorcycle road races, trials and scrambles, I did them all, on radio and TV for the BBC, and on TV for ITV. Gradually I got into the car scene as well by way of rallycross, Formula Ford, Formula 3 and Touring Cars, with the occasional Formula One event to whet my appetite: like the 1969 German Grand Prix at the stunning original Nrburgring, when Jacky Ickx took his Brabham to victory, and the Ring again in 1974 for Clay Regazzonis memorable Ferrari win.

And then in 1978 Jonathan Martin, BBC TVs Head of Sport, sent for me and said: Murray, were now going to do all the Formula One rounds, and I want you to handle the commentary. Yes sir! Yes indeed!

Fifty-three years have now passed since my first-ever BBC commentary on the 1949 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, and 24 years since I was lucky enough to become TVs Formula One commentator. I can look back on a wonderfully happy life which has taken me round the world umpteen times as an enthusiastic and excited observer of the sport I love so much.

Motorcycles? Those immortals Jimmy Guthrie, Tim Hunt, Stanley Woods, Jimmy Simpson and Wal Handley were family friends, and my childhood uncles when we all stayed at the Castle Mona Hotel in Douglas for the Isle of Man TT races which, for me, still have a magic beyond words. Geoff Duke, Mike Hailwood, Phil Read, Giacomo Agostini, Jim Redman, John Surtees, Barry Sheene, Wayne Gardner and the other later greats were a lot more to me than just the people I revered and respected as some of the greatest of all time. They were my friends.

Luck plays a major part in everybodys life, and I was privileged to be associated in a small way with Germanys world-beating Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union teams when they came to England in 1937 and 1938 for the Donington Grands Prix. So I can put my hand on my heart and say, with truth, that Ive stood beside Tazio Nuvolari, Bernd Rosemeyer, Rudolf Caracciola, Hermann Lang and the autocratic Manfred von Brauchitsch, and marvelled at their spectacular driving of the dominant, brutal silver-coloured high-tech monsters.

And since 1949, by virtue of my broadcasting life, Ive been fortunate enough to have been where its at as worldwide motor sport developed from its modest post-war beginnings to its current worldwide eminence. Do I appreciate my luck? I most certainly do, and I never cease to marvel at it. Ive been massively privileged to meet and know so many great people, not just the drivers and riders but the officials, industry leaders and workers, the engineers, mechanics, sponsors, media people, enthusiasts and countless others who make motor sport so exciting and absorbing.

Time, then, to share my thoughts. Who were my true heroes? The drivers, the personalities and the folk behind the scenes: who were the people who have made the sport what it is? All will be revealed, but I must emphasise that they are my heroes, and also that I have not attempted to rank them in any order of absolute merit. That would have to be a very subjective affair when youre covering a period of over half a century.

Your own personal Greats may well be very different to mine. Was Fangio greater than Senna? Clark greater than Schumacher? Ascari greater than Prost? Each raced at different times to very different regulations, in very different cars, in very different circumstances and on very different circuits.

So Ive chickened out. I have my views, of course. For me the fire, the style, the charisma, the all-round brilliance and the sheer ability to win races against overwhelming odds puts Tazio Nuvolari above all others, in the same way and for the same reasons that my friend the late Mike Hailwood is my all-time Number One motorcycle hero. But I cant prove it. Its not a mathematical or logical thing. Its a gut feeling based on my personal preferences and bias. Ive simply wandered down memory lane decade by decade, recalling the men and their feats who have meant the most to me. And Ive slipped in a trio of circuits where my commentating adrenaline has flowed most freely. Not that it takes much to get it going anywhere!