Motorsport: Kiwi F1 legend back in the spotlight

Chris Amon. Photo / Rotorua Daily Post.

The memories will flood back for Chris Amon when his life and career are celebrated at the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing.

Amon was one of three New Zealand drivers, with Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme, who took on the motorsport world in the 1960s and early 70s with notable success.

The first festival was held at Hampton Downs last January, when McLaren's feats and legacy took centre stage.

Amon, 67, said he was "a bit overawed" at the honour that will come his way at the Waikato circuit over the weekends of January 21 to 23 and 28 to 30.

"It will be a lot of fun and it will be nice to see a lot of my old cars," he said.

"Hopefully we can raise a bit of money for the Bruce McLaren Trust, because Bruce's memory is dear to the heart.

"We spent a lot of time together and he did a lot for me."

As well as classic racing, the festival will have what organisers say will be the best collection of cars that Amon drove.

They include a Ferrari 246T, the Amon AF101 he used in four Formula One races in 1974, the A40 Special that was his first single-seater and a 1974 Talon MR1A.

Amon took the Talon for a brief spin around Hampton Downs this week, his first time behind the wheel since the 1975 Tasman Cup.

"It certainly brings back a few memories," he said.

"The engine feels really responsive and you forget how much performance the car had. It feels magic."

Amon's career included 108 Grand Prix over 14 seasons, during which he finished on the podium 11 times.

Although a GP win eluded him, he can count among his victories the 1966 Le Mans 24-hour race.

Advances in technology and safety, and the increased amounts of money, have made the sport a different animal from Amon's heyday.

The Talon, with just four instruments measuring the revs, oil pressure, oil temperature and water temperature, is an indicator of that.

Nowadays, Amon noted, an F1 car had a steering wheel with a multitude of buttons, and electronics, computers and aerodynamics ruled.

But he wasn't envious of today's generation of drivers.

"I think in terms of the driving pleasure and the types of cars, we probably had the best of it," he said.

"The two things that have changed are they do get a lot better paid, but more importantly, it's a lot safer now.

"That was the downside of our era, it was so damned dangerous. We weren't that conscious of it at the time, but it was and we lost a lot of people."

Among those lost was McLaren, who was killed while testing at Goodwood in England in 1970.

While Niki Lauda's fiery crash in 1976 has often been seen as the catalyst for Amon's retirement, he said he had always intended to call it quits at the end of that year.

"I was only 33 but I had been in it since I was 19 and I had had enough," he said. "I never got sick of the racing, but I got sick of the travelling, the restaurants, the hotels, the suitcases."

His trip to Hampton Downs to get back into the Talon was also a chance to catch up with his former chief mechanic Bruce Harre.

After Amon went to Europe in 1963, Harre followed him. When Amon was at Ferrari for three seasons in the late 1960s, Harre ran the Italian marque's tyre testing programmes.

Recalling the pair's path "from Bulls and Hunterville to sitting down to lunch with Mr Ferrari" brings a smile to Harre's face.

In 1974, his work with Firestone took him to South Africa, where he spent 24 years before returning to New Zealand.

Motorsport has remained in the family - his youngest son, Michael, will be race engineer for the Virgin Racing F1 team next year.

Like Amon, Harre, 71, is happy that his time in the sport came when it did, because the huge size of modern F1 team means "you're more of a cog in the wheel today".

"In our day, we could weld, work on the lathe, even drive the race car," he said. "We built the engines, we built the gearbox. We would go to a race and there would be two or three mechanics, a driver and a team manager."

- NZPA