A common opinion is that the greatest wet-weather drive in motorsport history was the victory of Pedro Rodriguez at the 1970 BOAC 1000km at Brands Hatch (Link). Being a massive Pedro fan myself, I tend to agree, although there was another drive which could be placed alongside his Brands Hatch victory. It was another Pedro masterclass, which also happened to be run in mixed conditions, and sadly turned out to be the final win of his life. It was also the final win for the infamous Porsche 917 in a world championship sportscar event. This was the 1971 Zeltweg 1000km at the Osterreichring.
Set in the rolling Styrian hills, the Osterreichring was an incredibly fast circuit in any car, let alone a Group 5 sports prototype. Pedro was of course driving the legendary Gulf-liveried Porsche 917k, entered by John Wyer Automotive (JWA). By 1971, the 917 was sorted into a formidable machine, with up to 630bhp on tap from its 5-litre flat 12 engine. The imbalance issues which plagued it early on in its life were gone and if you respected it, it would treat you well.
A lap of the Osterreichring in a 917 can only be imagined by us mere mortals. Take turn one for example, the Hella Licht Kurve, which was a very quick blind right hander over a crest. The very best drivers were just about flat through there, but the speed and precision required in that corner was indicative of the rest of the lap. All the corners were fast, the drivers needed to be committed, but also drive with some margin in their back pocket. The 917 was not a car you wanted to crash at any speed, let alone at the speeds they were doing around the Osterreichring.
The main difference between the Osterreichring and somewhere like Brands Hatch was the potential to gain time. The relatively slow corners at Brands Hatch were perfect for making the difference in lap time, a driver can always make up more time in a slow corner, as there is a long braking zone and the corner itself goes on for a long time. Gaining two tenths through somewhere like the Hella Licht Kurve at the Osterreichring was a totally different thing to gaining two tenths through Druids at Brands Hatch. Both require technical skill, but one also requires immense bravery.
Jackie Oliver had partnered Pedro for the majority of the season, but he went off to drive for Shadow in Can-Am, so 1970 Le Mans winner Richard Attwood was asked to drive alongside Pedro in Austria. Attwood was winding down his career and other than finishing second at Le Mans in 1971, hadn’t driven much that season. He had actually been working in the family business, and was by his own admission ‘rusty’ when he got the call up to race. He saw himself very much in a supporting role to Pedro.
Pedro was used to sharing a car with a team mate that wasn’t as quick as he was. His partner in 1970, Leo Kinnunen was never as quick as Pedro, whereas Jo Siffert in the sister car tended to have drivers as fast, or nearly as fast as he was. Arguably, this handicap urged Pedro to dig deeper in certain races.
In total, 25 cars qualified and the main competitors to Pedro and Attwood were of course their JWA team mates of Jo Siffert and Derek Bell, a similar Martini 917 of Helmut Marko and Gerard Larrouse, four Ferrari 512’s, plus an assortment of three litre cars. For 1972 the 5-litre Porsche 917 would be outlawed, so both Ferrari and Alfa Romeo were pushing ahead with the development of their lightweight, nimble 3-litre cars. These were headed by the Ferrari 312P, essentially their Formula One car with two seats, driven by 1970 vice-world champion Jacky Ickx and emerging star Clay Regazzoni. Alfa Romeo entered three T33/3 models.
Practice went well for Pedro as he set pole position with a 1 m 39.49 lap, at over 130mph average. He set the time an hour before the end of the session and promptly stepped out of the car, changed and watched the others trying to beat his time. His time was about half a second quicker than Ickx in the Ferrari 312P. Attwood didn’t get a huge amount of practice laps, but nevertheless got his eye back in and ended up around 2.5 seconds off his team mate.
Attwood did offer some insight into Pedro’s speed in Carlos Eduardo Jalife-Villalon excellent book, ‘The Brothers Rodriguez’. Referring to the super-fast Hella Licht Kurve Attwood said “I think that corner was the ultimate test of skill and I was there, watching Pedro practice, going at full speed all the time. Siffert did the same. I wasn’t even close to taking it at full speed, so later I asked Pedro how he did it. He told me, ‘it’s easy, you simply push the pedal all the way down.”
Come race day and after threatening clouds had appeared in the morning, drizzle began to fall just before the start. One can only imagine what it would have been like for the other drivers lining up behind Rodriguez and Ickx in damp conditions. They were the best in the business in the wet and must have had a psychological edge over the others even before the flag had dropped.
The race started at a furious pace, with Pedro sprinting into an early lead. He wanted to push ahead, as his 5-litre car would have to stop for fuel around every 50 to 55 minutes, whereas the 3-litre cars could stretch their fuel by another 15 minutes. This meant Ickx and Regazzoni in the Ferrari and the three Alfa Romeos could make one less stop, perhaps two. Also mindful of Attwood’s relative lack of pace, he knew he had to build a gap.
By the end of the first lap Pedro had a two second lead over Ickx, who in turn led Herbert Muller in the big five-litre Ferrari 512. Siffert in the other Gulf Porsche accidentally tried to set off in third gear and was way down the field. Pedro’s pace was relentless as he soon started lapping back markers. Amazingly by lap 25, Pedro had a 23 second lead over Ickx and he had lapped everyone up to eight place.
By lap 30, Pedro held a commanding lead over Ickx, but then his engine started spluttering. An electrical glitch had reared its head, as explained by Pedro’s chief mechanic Alan Hearn in John Horseman’s book ‘Racing in the Rain’. “Pedro came in with a virtually flat battery which was exchanged for a fully charged one. Ludovic, the Porsche factory electrician who was assigned to us, checked the voltage regulator which he found to be faulty.”
Most reports put the glitch down to a loose alternator belt and team boss John Wyer thought Pedro had been flashing his lights too much at back markers. Not the case on both accounts.
As a result, Pedro limped into the pits and the car stayed stationary for nearly six minutes, until the repairs were made. By the time Pedro fired up the flat-12, dumped the clutch and blasted out of the pits, he was in seventh position, and nearly three laps off the lead. Thus started one of the greatest drives of his life.
Pedro got his head down and started to close the gap between him and the cars in front. The circuit continued to have a nice sprinkling of rain and whereas not the deluge he drove in at Brands Hatch, it did mean an already tricky circuit became quite hazardous. As such, some drivers ‘back pocket’ margins started to expand, but not Pedro’s.
In his book ‘The Certain Sound’, JW Automotive team boss John Wyer explained the mindset of Pedro in those laps after the battery change. “The situation seemed helpless, but Pedro had quite different ideas”. By lap 43 Pedro had set a new fastest lap of 1 m 39.99, which was only half a second off his pole time, plus the track was damp!
By lap 50 Pedro was up to fifth place and closing on the Alfa Romeos up ahead by ten seconds per lap. By lap 77 he was up to fourth place and by lap 88 he was up to third place. Pedro was consistently gaining by five seconds per lap on the leaders. He still wasn’t on the lead lap though.
The routine pit stops came and went and before long Pedro had neared the maximum stint length allowed by the rules, 3.5 hours. Attwood readied himself to take over so that Pedro could get refreshed before getting back in the car. Pedro brought the car into the pits whilst in third place. He jumped out and Attwood rejoined the race still a lap down on Ickx in the Ferrari. In the dozen or so laps that followed, Pedro had a wash, combed his hair, had a drink, had a shoulder massage and asked to see Attwood’s lap times.
Seeing that Attwood was not gaining on the second placed Martini 917 of Marko and Larrousse, and was losing time to the leading Ferrari of Ickx and Regazzoni, Pedro started to get anxious. As explained by John Horsman, Pedro approached John Wyer and said “Mr Wyer, I think I would like my car back.”
Attwood was lapping at about four seconds per lap slower than Pedro, so whereas he was holding a solid third place, the opportunity to catch the leaders was slipping away.
Pedro had his mandatory 15 minutes of rest, and Attwood was pulled back into the pits for Pedro to take over. Attwood was fairly blunt about his short stint at the wheel “I didn’t pass anyone, nobody passed me, I simply kept the car intact while Pedro rested”.
Pedro was now nearly two laps down and had 60 laps left to un lap himself, then catch Ickx again to challenge for the lead. In the laps that followed, Pedro really got into a groove and was making some audacious moves in his pursuit to get back onto the lead lap.
The problem with the Osterreichring was the lack of slow corners in which a driver could out-brake someone. Most of his moves were sliding up the inside into the entry to quick corners or tucking up behind on the exit and using the power of the 917 to get past on the next straight. The level of concentration required therefore must have been staggering, as John Wyer put it in ‘The Brothers Rodriguez’, “Pedro’s stamina was extraordinary. He could drive absolutely at the limit indefinitely.”
By lap 133 Ickx handed over to Regazzoni for their final scheduled stop. Pedro followed them in three laps later to refuel for the final time. When he rejoined the race he was still a lap down, but he could see the Ferrari up ahead. One more overtake and he would be on the lead lap. He achieved this 13 laps later.
Denis Jenkinson of Motorsport Magazine set the scene nicely in terms of the psychology of the Ferrari versus JWA pits. The JWA pit “telling him (Pedro) that he was now only 127 seconds behind the Ferrari. The Maranello team were frantically telling Regazzoni he was only 127 seconds ahead.”
It was now a sprint to the finish, on the lead lap, 24 laps to go and Pedro was lapping four seconds per lap quicker than Regazzoni. At this pace he would have caught him, but could he pass him? Then on lap 145 Pedro really piled on the pressure and set a new lap record of 1 m 39.35. Not only had he beaten his pole position time, but he’d gone over a second quicker than the best Formula One race lap at the 1970 Austrian Grand Prix.
Denis Jenkinson said “it did not need much in the way of mathematics to see that the remaining 23 laps were just about enough for Rodriguez to reduce the gap to zero, and it only needed a slight baulking of the Ferrari by a slower car, or a slight error by Regazzoni to make a Porsche victory probable rather than possible.”
Then disaster for Regazzoni. His car snapped on him and he hit the guard rail on one of the long corners at the back of the circuit. The Ferrari was out, Pedro inherited the lead and instantly backed off his pace by nine seconds per lap. Regazzoni blamed a mechanical failure on the crash, perhaps it was, or perhaps he was having to push too hard under pressure from Pedro.
When Pedro crossed the line there was much cheering, but also much relief from the JWA pit. Pedro had driven for 157 of the 170 laps but didn’t look it, as recounted by John Horsman. “I well remember when Pedro stepped out of the car and removed his helmet; there was not a sign of perspiration on his brow, his hair was immaculate. He appeared to have just taken a pleasant afternoon’s drive in the Austrian countryside, not 580 miles in 4 hours and 43 minutes of 10/10ths driving.”
Team boss John Wyer summed up Pedro’s drive perfectly, “He drove with a cold implacable fury”. Wyer also felt Pedro would have won anyway, but it would have been close. Pedro was a little less diplomatic, “I was really sorry when I saw Regazzoni off the road. I wanted to pass him once more”.
Pedro had also amassed enough points to be once again the champion driver in the International Championship of Makes, essentially he was the world sportscar champion.
Attwood meanwhile couldn’t believe his luck. A one off drive for 15 minutes and he’d won the Zeltweg 1000km. He retired from racing shortly afterwards. He managed to walk away from the sport in one piece, something not many drivers could say in that era. He’s still active in motorsport to this day as an ambassador for Porsche at the age of 81.
Attwood’s assessment of Pedro and the 917 is fascinating. “I don’t think anyone could have been faster than Pedro in that car, at that time. Whether he was the best in the world in F1 terms, I don’t know. But here (at the Osterreichring) and at Brands Hatch (in 1970), he was against some great wet weather drivers and he was on a different planet. He’d gone to the Porsche team where Siffert was known as the greatest Porsche driver of them all, and yet by ‘71 Pedro had become clearly quicker than him everywhere. I think Pedro was only just reaching that level of performance.”
Much happened in the following two weeks, including a renewed offer from Ferrari to race their 312PB sportscar the following year. Just imagine the prospect of Ickx and Rodriguez in the same car! There was also talk of a possible Formula One seat with the Scuderia. As mentioned in ‘The Brothers Rodriguez’, Pedro even said to the Ferrari executives “if Regazzoni can go so well in that machine (their F1 car), imagine what I could do.” The future looked bright.
The following weekend Pedro raced in the French Grand Prix, running in second place before retiring. He then tested at Silverstone in preparation for the British Grand Prix and ended up quickest. Pedro was hoping to drive the BRM P167 at the Norisring Interserie round that weekend, but he was told it wouldn’t be ready. John Wyer didn’t have time to prepare a 917, so Pedro decided to accept an offer from Herbert Muller to drive his Ferrari 512.
Pedro started the race on the front row and immediately got into the lead. Then on lap 12 he lost control of the car, hit the wall and the Ferrari burst into flames. Pedro didn’t stand a chance.
John Horsman and the rest of the JWA team were devastated. “At Slough we were all shattered. It was unbelievable, he never crashed. The workshop moved at half speed. The heart had gone out of the desire to race.” Equally his BRM Formula One team struggled to come to terms with what had happened.
His funeral in Mexico City was almost a state affair, with President Echeverria himself acting as an honor guard. Thousands lined the streets in respect of Pedro.
Was the Osterreichring Pedro’s greatest race? Perhaps, but in a way it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that 50 years later there are still people talking about the rapid little Mexican and all of his remarkable feats. As John Wyer said, “for me, Pedro was the greatest driver of his time… I mean the greatest. He is irreplaceable.”
motorsportmuse 