“I think he was a lazy driver”
Jacky Ickx, born on 1 January 1945 in Brussels, turned 79. The Belgian driver, supremely gifted, won eight Formula One Grand Prix for Ferrari and Brabham between 1968 and 1972, and finished twice runner-up in the Drivers’ World F1 Championship in 1969 and 1970. He also triumphed six times at the Le Mans 24 Hours, in the most dangerous period of motor racing. His 1969 and 1977 victories in the French classic, for example, are legendary.
In 1974, he joins Colin Chapman’s Team Lotus, but never finds the necessary confidence in his car to challenge his team-mate Ronnie Peterson’s speed. While the Swede wins three Grand Prix in 1974 in the ageing Lotus 72, Ickx often qualifies at the back of the grid and only scores two podiums, with third in Brazil and in Great-Britain. It must be said that in 1974 and 1975 Team Lotus lacks the funds to field two perfectly prepared cars, and Ickx suffers the most from this situation.
Peter Warr, Lotus team manager at the time, remembers Jacky Ickx in Michael Oliver’s superb book ‘Lotus 72, Formula One Icon’. He tells his story: “We never did get to know what it was that made Ickx just superb in a particular set of circumstances. I think he was a lazy driver, because it seemed to be that, when he was fast, it was when he was thrown a challenge that seemed so impossibly difficult or tricky that it suddenly awoke in him something that said ‘Right, this is an opportunity for me to try and prove something again’. If he didn’t get anything to prove, you have to say he was pretty steady. Every now and then something would happen and it would fire him up. There were just moments in Ickx’s time with us when he was blindingly fast and you thought ‘Wow!’ and other times when he was just a regular race driver.”
Nevertheless, Jacky Ickx showed once more, his superb car control, when in the pouring rain, conditions he excelled in, he defeated (in the absence of his team-mate) Niki Lauda and his superior Ferrari 312B3, at the 1974 Race of Champion held at Brands Hatch (picture below). It was, at 29 years of age, the last F1 victory for the Belgian champion.
