Doug Nye – My perfect Revival treat

He is, in fact, a quite extraordinary fellow. He has a grounding as a mechanical engineer. He is also co-founder and trustee of the Boultbee Foundation, a charitable organisation promoting social change through helping to improved health, education, employment, well-being and social advancement. And in 2011 he set up clean-tech investment company Synergy Energy, seeking to provide better methods of meeting the energy needs of city-dwellers, worldwide.

Just to stave off any assumption that such worthy ventures might sound just “a bit dull”, Steve is also a record-setting explorer and pilot, having flown a helicopter between the North and South Poles – at second attempt, his first having ended with his original helicopter at the bottom of the Southern Ocean. He had previously established another first by driving a land-based vehicle of his own construction across the Bering Strait from Alaska to Russian territory. Next time, perhaps, he might remember to tell the Russians he’s coming…

You see? As I said, an extraordinary fellow. His wife’s father is one of my closest friends and in recent years Steve has turned himself into a capable racing driver with his select stable of proper cars.

When our paths crossed at Revival he said he’d been trying to contact me. Would I care to accompany Moss in Steve’s ex-Kangaroo Stable (Australian team)  Aston Martin DB3S for the Jack Brabham Tribute?  I think “Whoa, yes indeed” covers my response.

However, Revival Saturday – as you might recall – was rather soggy. In fact it was Scottish dreach, with fine rain from a grey sky squalling relentlessly across the circuit as the Brabham Tribute cars assembled. David Brabham was there looking uncannily like a slimline version of his late Dad, wearing the old man’s crash helmet. Stirling arrived with wife Susie and inseparable Goodwood minder Darren alongside. He is physically quite fragile these days and folding himself into the Aston’s driving seat was very evidently uncomfortable as we had to fold his right foot inside the door pillar.

Jack Brabham was a driver with the Aussie/Kiwi Kangaroo Stable when they ran this DB3S – chassis ‘104’ - with its distinctive green and gold Australian livery, in 1955. It is set up with a single-seat perspex windscreen ahead of the driver… and none on the passenger side, where the cockpit is normally fared-off by a rigid aluminium tonneau.

Stirling grinned at me, I looked at the sky – squinting against the rain – glanced at the unprotected passenger seat just beyond the unprotected lip of that aluminium bonnet and scuttle with its swollen globules of water clinging to the polished paintwork, and shook my head.

“Unless I can borrow a full-face helmet I’m just going to drown in the airstream, or literally in the spray”, I heard myself protest. “Chicken!” they sympathized, then a helpful official – without a single thought for my remaining dry – produced a full-face crash helmet.

I was sooooo grateful.

I wriggled it over my bald head and, looking like a human cannonball, stepped over the Aston’s cockpit side to slither down into the passenger seat.

Stirling waved a thumbs-up, left-handed, the assembly area marshals waved us forward and we swept out onto the circuit. How many, many times had Stirl driven this way before?

Well, not quite this way, since within the first ten yards the Aston’s normally crisp, 3-litre 6-cylinder engine spluttered, coughed – and subsided onto only three cylinders (at best). With the rest of the Tribute cars dragging brakes in our wake Stirling declutched and whooped the throttle – the Aston cleared its throat – but under load immediately half-died again. We coasted almost to a standstill on the inside into Madgwick, and I was vigorously waving our followers past on the left.

The engine died completely. Stirl tried to restart – once – twice – and the third time the engine fired, coughed, blew-out rich, black smoke and then struck up on all six. Stirling picked-up first gear, and we were away, up through the gears to catch the cavalcade.

Now I’m about twice the Maestro’s size, and without any windscreen my side I sprouted three-feet wide across the shoulders like a massive airbrake. In width, height, weight (and gender) my arrival would have been unwelcome by the most friendly of racing drivers…

At least in my borrowed crash hat I could breathe, and see, against the falling rain, slattering into me like tracer fire over the sleek, water-streaming bonnet, the cockpit-cooling air intake that side dumping a steady water stream straight into my lap, slightly left of centre for those with the stomach for detail…

I began to photograph and film my driver as the usual Moss – quite the oldest 16-year-old I have ever known – vanished before my eyes, and he became grim-faced, intent, totally focused and absorbed in the business at hand. So close to his 87^th birthday I could sympathise. No past sporting great ever needs to make a fool of himself before such a sizeable public…  And conditions were horrible. I sensed that though this might be just a tribute to one of his now departed old rivals, the process of driving such a car – in such conditions – while unable to see at all, straight through that rain spattered windscreen, was deadly serious.

Indeed when we completed that lap and formed-up on the starting grid, Stirl explained that he was sitting so low he had to look straight through the perspex, instead of just over it, so Steve’s very attentive mechanic rushed off and found a couple of cushions to lift the Maestro higher. It worked and Stirling was much happier, as the Tribute grid took off.

I was filming, and photographing, and straining forward against the unbroken airflow when I think Stirl glanced across and saw I was still getting pretty soaked from the unrelenting stream-driven rain. So he immediately realigned the car a little to the right and into St Mary’s and round towards Lavant he put us right into the spray-plume coming off one of the Formula 1 cars ahead – and gave me the full benefit of that, as well.

Cheers mate.

And so we completed our tribute to dear old Jack, and as we returned to the assembly area I blew a stream of water from my mouth and shook my head like one of my adored old Springer Spaniels to shower the rain from my whiskers – then we set about the task of lifting the greatest living Briton carefully – respectfully – from that cramped cockpit.

Unable to dry out, I later tramped across to the Bonhams Auction tent, where amongst the packed crowd it was warm and I stood there in a little anti-social exclusion zone creating my own personal cloud of steam...  Johnny-no-Mates, I dried through – and watched my colleague Jamie Knight knock down that wonderful time-machine Porsche 550RS to its new owner for a world record £4.6-million Sterling.

Back on circuit next day I was asked to join a TV interview with Moss, three-time Indy ‘500’ winner Dario Franchitti and (very presentable) presenter Nicki Shields. We were partway through that when Stirling turned to me and remarked conversationally, “Cracking piece of crumpet, this one” – at which both Dario and I simply cracked-up. And so did Nicki – and her spectating husband whom we later complimented for his taste.

But Moss the Incorrigible? As I said, the great man is still the oldest 16-year-old one could ever hope to meet.

See Nicki’s Instagram reaction, here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BKO1UNgDcPq/

Revival was decidedly soggy in parts, but truly glorious in others. Roll on the 20^th, next year.

Photography courtesy of The GP Library.