Tiff Needell: My life in cars
Toddling at Goodwood to and learning to drive in a Morris 1000 — Tiff Needell on the cars that shaped his life
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My family car as a boy was…
An Austin 7. Growing up in the relatively austere ’50s, our first family cars were a series of 20-year-old Austin 7s at £10 a go. We eventually traded up to an Austin A30 before the best of all – the Morris 1000. It was in the Morris that I learned to drive and learned to drift round wet roundabouts.
My first ever road car was…
A Morris 1000 Traveller, bought from an advert in Exchange & Mart on a wet night, mainly because the price was exactly the £75 I had to spend. Lesson learned, you don’t see the rust in the dark.
I was first hooked on racing when…
It was all my dad’s fault. He’d been a BARC member at Brooklands before the war and then competed in a couple of three-lap sprints at the first Goodwood Members’ Meetings. He took me there as soon as I could walk and I have vague memories of a green Thinwall Special, manic 500cc Formula 3, pit fires and, of course, the day Stirling Moss crashed on Easter Monday.
My first ever race was…
I’d done a few four-car, five-lap races at the Brands Hatch racing drivers school, in their Lotus 51 Formula Fords, but my first real race was in the Lotus 69F that I’d won in the Autosport competition Formula Ford. It was at Snetterton on May 2, 1971. I qualified ninth in an 18-car field and finished fifth. I was 19 years old and living the dream.
My first ever win was…
Thruxton, May 28, 1972. With no karting experience, I’d spent my first year learning the ropes at as many tracks as I could get to. I did 38 races; one second place and three third places came and went before the big moment arrived. Instead of going to work on Monday with a lot of excuses, all I had to say was, “I won!”
The win I remember most was…
The 1976 Danish Grand Prix, sadly not for F1 but a round of the FF1600 European Championship where I’d been brought in to help Hawke driver Derek Warwick win the title. In a class field that included Derek Daly and Jan Lammers, I put it on pole and led all the way ready to let Derek by on the last lap… but they put the flag out a lap early.
Sprint race…
Lewis or Max?
Senna or Prost?
Oversteer or understeer?
Oversteer
Brands Hatch or Silverstone?
My favourite racing car was…
The Formula 2 March 782 BMW that I was driving towards a podium finish at Hockenheim in just my second F2 race before the engine let go. Beautifully balanced, it was the perfect driver’s car – an absolute joy. Ground effects would arrive the next year and things would never be the same again.
If I could race in any era it would be…
The 1960s and ’70s, an era so beautifully described in Brian Redman’s brilliant autobiography [Daring Drivers, Deadly Tracks, 2016]. Powerful cars on demanding, if dangerous, circuits from grands prix at Spa and the Nürburgring to sports cars at the Targa Florio and Le Mans. Think Lotus 49, Porsche 917, Can-Am Lolas…
If I could race in one more grand prix it would be at…
The Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit but put back to how it used to be.
When I’m driving, I listen to…
What the engine is doing.