Whose team could change four tyres the faster? KenTyrrell andMcLaren’s Teddy Mayer had £600 riding on it.

The former’s crew – a gun guy at each corner, a jack man at either end – was said to have gone sub-10 seconds during practice. The latter’s squad was reported to be using insider Indycar knowledge: spring-loaded captive hub nuts.

With their respective number ones Jody Scheckter and Emerson Fittipaldi suited up, they rebooted. Scheckter lit his new Goodyear wets after 12.8s. Fittipaldi was let down by his equipment. Just a bit of fun in the build-up to the 1975 British Grand Prix.

Except that Silverstone’s widened pitlane obviated the mandatory red flag upon rain’s onset – a provision not as yet implemented – so that teams could shed their slicks and get wet-shod. And the sky over Club was darkening as Carlos Pace’sBrabham headed the pack into Copse.

The Brazilian would lead the first dozen laps, whereupon Clay Regazzoni’sFerrari blew by at the new Woodcote chicane – Tarmac laid over polythene sheeting and retained by wooden kerbing spiked into the old road! – and stormed away.

Speaking of which, the barometer swung on lap 19 – it was beginning to spit – when ‘Regga’ dropped it at Club and biffed his rear wing awry. Poleman Tom Pryce’s Shadow now hit the front. Two laps later – spits had become spots had become a squall – he twitched, and whacked the sleepers at Becketts.

Scheckter, the most aggressive on slicks, had in short order passed Niki Lauda’s Ferrari, scything through at Club just as Regazzoni went a-mowing, and then Pace at a still dry Copse to be second.

But, as wary witness to Pryce’s crash – and perhaps buoyed by those 12.8s – Jody pitted at the end of the lap. Those giving chase – Pace, Lauda, Fittipaldi, Hesketh’s James Hunt and, making stealthy progress in the second McLaren, Jochen Mass – stayed out.

McLaren versus Tyrrell pitstop challenge was a bit of pre-race fun

Photo by: David Phipps

“I was usually pretty good in those kind of circumstances,” reckons Scheckter. “I always felt that you could stay out quite a long time on dry tyres. It was only when you started aquaplaning that you needed wets.”

Today’s mantra in such circumstances is: be on the right tyres for the conditions. Easy to say in an era of ship-to-shore radio, weather radar, real-time data analysis, warm, cosying ‘blankets’, and muscularly memorised sub-2s swaps.  

“Pitstops were not a part of Formula 1 back then,” reflects John Watson, his underfunded Surtees mired in the midfield. “The cars were not designed for them. There was no pit equipment, as we know it today. No way to say that you were coming in other than a hand signal, followed by another lap. The pinnacle of motorsport in the mid-1970s – you couldn’t make it up!

“A team would be swinging its legs, drinking tea, thinking how great F1 was. They’d not have a clue what was happening elsewhere on the track. It was a different mindset.

“So much could go wrong. If I came in unannounced would they have tyres ready to fit? How many jacks did we have?” John Watson

“Simple contingencies a team manager might have considered? A weather report for one. Silverstone had an ATV [Airport Transit Visa], people were flying in and out – they could have told you what the weather was doing. But, no. The only person out the back of the circuit was Ian Titchmarsh, doing circuit commentary.

“So much could go wrong. If I came in unannounced would they have tyres ready to fit? How many jacks did we have? The wet was good in that we had one – there were no inters – but often they’d sit unused on their rims for months, left curing in the sun. They’d be as slippery as hell if their compound had deteriorated.

“At least by staying out you were trusting yourself. That was the judgement that I – and others – made in that first phase of rain: manageable. Plus Silverstone is well known for its microclimates. Why fit wets when you might only get four or five laps on them?”

Fair warning. Scheckter’s stop was not all he might have hoped for, and – despite autobahn speeds along pitlane – he emerged ninth. It was, however, better than Lauda’s. The left-front detached as the Austrian accelerated away. Hoses were stretched comically to reach, and the offending wheel was reattached – on the wonk. Lauda crabbed and crawled to pit once more.

Pace’s Brabham demoted poleman Pryce’s Shadow at the start of the race

Photo by: David Phipps

Scheckter, meanwhile, was catching up. Hand over mist. On lap 27, he overtook: Mass, into Copse; Fittipaldi, around the outside at Maggotts; Hunt, from way back at Becketts; and Pace, surfing the Brabham’s bow wave diving into Stowe. Within five laps he was almost 30s ahead – of Shadow’s Jean-Pierre Jarier, also on wets, who had passed three cars on lap 30.

Ah, but the sun was peeping through. On lap 32, Scheckter pitted from the lead for a second time (team-mate Patrick Depailler had come in two laps earlier, for wets). Scheckter’s should have been a slam-dunk – but his second stop was worse than his first: 46s, due to a shortage of airline pressure. Had those 12.8s cost precious psi?

“We ran out of [compressed] air,” says Ian Flux, then the skinny, keen-teen at Embassy Hill. “We only had four bottles per race. And there was nowhere to recharge them. We had made so many stops that we had to use smash-hammers for the last one.”

Jarier, too, cut his deep-cut losses, Hunt sweeping into the lead as the Frenchman peeled for slicks on lap 35: a stop that cost five places.

Hunt’s car, however, was not in rude health. A fractured exhaust pipe – to break free eventually and almost collect Scheckter – was not only costing power, but also cooking a CV joint, and so greasing the rear brakes. Fittipaldi, sensing weakness, closed quickly.

This Brazilian’s progress had been measured. Positive when propitious, he had stayed in the hunt – picking off ‘Master James’ twice to run second to Pace – before easing his pace as the rain quickened.

Unfazed by Scheckter’s hydro-technics – Emmo indeed made a crucial pass on compatriot ‘Moco’ amid the mist – he avoided Mass spinning from second place on lap 30, and waited for the race to come back to slicks.

He prised the lead from Hunt on lap 43. Just as importantly, he had put Regazzoni – running quickly with a new wing atop a bent stem-post – two laps down with a not-today-sunshine move at Woodcote. The obstreperous Swiss was now Pace’s problem. Fittipaldi had his manageable gap.

Jarier’s helmet was cracked by a blow from catch-fencing pole

Photo by: David Phipps

Freakish conditions, of course, were beyond control. The circuit’s Northants half was dry, but its Bucks bit was bubbling up. Club would cop it first. But it was Jarier’s shunt at Woodcote on lap 54 that tipped the pits the wink. Too late, for most.

Jarier’s head was still swimming – helmet cracked, forehead gashed by one of the wooden poles supporting the four miles of wire-netting catch-fencing – as the rest tipped their visors to fate. Pace spun at Becketts on lap 56, rejoining just in time to join Scheckter, tiptoeing in second place and second gear, in the walls of water and wood.

“They had just done a new surface that must have been very porous on top and sealed at the bottom,” says Scheckter. “When it was raining to a certain extent you had great grip. As soon as it filled it was like a swimming pool. I was just gliding, floating, no steering.

“The back end wasn’t working. You lifted your foot and everything went silent. Zero grip. Five or six of us went off at Club. But Ken gave me a hard time about it.”

“Suddenly it was like a mirage in the desert. The bottom half of Hangar Straight was like a mirror. Was it an illusion? No, it was a watering hole”John Watson

Tony Brise, peering from behind Fittipaldi, had been the first (of 12) to crash on that lap, his helmet – of ‘frangible bolt’ notoriety – ripped off by the fencing.

Debutants Dave Morgan and Brian Henton – the latter replacing rainmaster Jacky Ickx, who had called time on his troubled spell at Lotus – were next to fall foul of the weather. Morgan was still in his cockpit when the Hesketh of his old F3 sparring partner Hunt slithered scarily up the Surtees’s nose.

And an ambulance had been scrambled and parked at the scene by the time Wilson Fittipaldi’s Copersucar arrived – backwards. Injuries were thankfully light bar those of marshal Howard Tilden – broken leg, dislocated shoulder – who had been bravely tending to Brise when the situation escalated.

The front advanced to Stowe: Mark Donohue’s March, Watson and Mass were ensnared by its fencing. Depailler crashed trying to escape it.

Slick-shod Scheckter confident and aggressive in his Tyrrell

Photo by: McKlein Publishing

“It seemed no worse than the first shower: manageable,” claims Watson. “Then suddenly it was like a mirage in the desert. The bottom half of Hangar Straight was like a mirror. Was it an illusion? No, it was a watering hole. It felt like an inch of rain had been dumped in 20 seconds. I was a passenger.

“Catch-fencing was good as a means of arresting a car where there was not a huge amount of room. There might have been more injuries without it. But I don’t think anybody in F1 had appreciated the amount of energy involved if a driver’s head hit a pole, even at 50-60mph. But it’s what we had.”

Fittipaldi made it through – just – and promptly pitted for wets. So, too, did the March of Vittorio Brambilla.

“By climbing the pitwall fence you could see the black clouds coming,” said team boss/designer Robin Herd. “I swear, as Vit came past the pits, that we made eye contact. We both knew now was the time.”

Fast in practice – fifth – Brambilla had been hampered during the race by a misfire, particularly on left-handers. Belying his wild man reputation, however, he had kept his cool and ‘it on the island’ to be fifth – from a low of 15th – at the time of his intuited stop on lap 55.

He would be second next time around – the only man to complete the final lap entirely at racing speed.

The race had been stopped by frantically waved flags of various hues 11 laps early. Rescue vehicles were rumbling across the track in the murk. One was treating a female spectator struck by a vaulting pole from Jarier’s shunt.

An official’s Wolseley Ambassador was ‘seen’ splashing along the start/finish straight, as marshals stood in the middle of the track to finally convince an understandably confused Fittipaldi that it was over.

Pace’s battered Brabham was placed second in the results!

Photo by: Getty Images

“We didn’t know,” said McLaren team manager Alastair Caldwell. “Emerson had pitted before the red flags. We sent him out again. Only then did we discover it had been stopped. My boys were upset because they thought we’d lost it.

“But I knew that the start/finish line was before the pits, that Emerson had completed his lap in the pitlane – and that the result would be taken from the lap before.

“He was a good wet-weather driver. Seventh on the grid, he won through racecraft. He made the correct call to pit when he did. We would have talked about stops beforehand – but we couldn’t discuss them live.

“We had a board indicating that the tyres were ready if a driver wanted to come in. I would have hung that out.

Fittipaldi was a worthy winner by any measure, but Brambilla had good reason to feel hard done by

“We didn’t practise pitstops, much [usually]. Ours was a tiny team: seven or eight guys on the road. We might have had a few more at Silverstone, our home race. But we didn’t have 20 w****** just to change tyres.”

Fittipaldi was a worthy winner by any measure –mutterings of his having overtaken Alan Jones’s Hill under yellows rightly ignored – but Brambilla had good reason to feel hard done by.

Had the race been stopped by the chequered flag its result would have been based on all those – six of them – still running: Fittipaldi, Brambilla, Lauda, Jones, Mario Andretti’s Parnelli and Regazzoni. Instead, the Italian was classified sixth, behind four crashed cars.

March’s resident legal eagle Max Mosley went into bat for him – for days – but an unchanged result would be confirmed. They would have bittersweet revenge one month later in Austria.

Brambilla felt robbed at Silverstone, but later won in Austria

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

Sadly Donohue succumbed to a brain hemorrhage – likely caused by a blow from a pole – when he crashed during dry practice at the Osterreichring. A marshal was also killed. And the race was held in worsening rain.

“Denny Hulme – the drivers’ representative – and I got it stopped,” says Caldwell. “The rain was horrific. I grabbed a [yellow] flag and went out on the circuit. Brambilla was so excited when he saw it that he crashed going up the hill. He almost hit me.”

Crazy times, crazy races.

Rival team owners demanded a restart. Mosley interjected: for that to happen a chequered flag should have stopped the race in conjunction with a black. There having been no such black flag, the result stood.

1975 British GP lap leaders

Carlos Pace (Brabham) 1-12

Clay Regazzoni (Ferrari) 13-18

Tom Pryce (Shadow) 19-20

Jody Scheckter (Tyrrell) 21

Carlos Pace (Brabham) 22-26

Jody Scheckter (Tyrrell) 27-32

Jean-Pierre Jarier (Shadow) 33-34

James Hunt (Hesketh) 35-42

Emerson Fittipaldi (McLaren) 43-56

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Winner Fittipaldi celebrates with McLaren team boss Teddy Mayer

Photo by: David Phipps