Jody Scheckter’s Milestone F1 Cars

Former F1 champion Jody Scheckter is not only a motorsport legend, but also our host at Laverstoke Park Farm.

Each year, Jody opens the doors to some of his precious and breath-taking collection of cars. This year, we are delighted to be able to showcase five of his milestone cars that chart his personal success.

The 1970s was a decade of bold designs and brave young drivers and Jody Scheckter drove some of the best and the boldest.

This incredible decade provided some profound innovations right across the paddock and in all aspects of car design. Tyres became radials and then slicks for the first time. Engines shrank from beefy 3 litre normally aspirated units to half of that capacity and sprouted turbochargers. Formula 1 was dangerous and exciting and accessible for car racing entrepreneurs and engineers.

This was the era of the brave. Innovation and lateral thinking were the lifeblood of Formula 1 in the 70s, giving us ground-effect aerodynamics, fan cars and even 6-wheeled race cars. Many of these developments would revolutionise Formula 1 and Jody helped to propel the revolution from the fast seat.

With this incredible selection of Jody’s F1 cars of the 70s we span not just his Formula 1 career but also the most exciting decade of race car development the sport had ever seen.

Take a scroll down to see what will be on show at CarFest South this year…

1971 McLaren M19 Formula One

After Jody’s 1971 Formula 2 campaign, Lotus offered him a Formula One drive at Watkins Glen in America in 1972. Jody mentioned this to McLaren, who made him a counteroffer to drive their McLaren M19 in the same event.

In his first drive of the car, Scheckter was just in awe of the grip of the car and downforce. Scheckter laughs when he considers that today’s drivers must experience that many times more than he did, back in the day.

In his first F1 race, he was lying fourth at one point before spinning on a damp track and dropping down the order.

1974 Tyrrell Formula One

Tyrrell was where Jody scored his first Formula One win, in Sweden in 1974, before going on to win the British Grand Prix in the same year. He left Monza equally leading the world championship but had a front suspension failure and eventually came third in the World Championship.

1976 Tyrell P34 ‘Six Wheeler’ Formula One

In 1976 Ken Tyrrell introduced the six-wheel Tyrell F1 car as a complete surprise to everyone, even his drivers, including Jody. Scheckter did not agree with the unique layout of the car because the team suggested the smaller frontal area would make it brake better. Scheckter’s counter argument was that the rear of the car was just as big as their competitors and therefore would make no difference and in fact, when braking into a corner, one of the little front wheels would jump up meaning you’d have to back off the accelerator. Despite his misgivings, Scheckter managed to win in Sweden and Britain and finish third in the championship, but he points out with a wry smile, ‘That third place makes things look a lot better than I remember them being...’

1977 Wolf F1

After three seasons of racing with Tyrell, Jody felt the time was right for a change of team. At the beginning of 1977 he joined Walter Wolf Racing which at the time was run by Frank Williams. With 20 people in the team, compared to Ferrari’s 200, Scheckter recalls this was a really ‘fun and exciting’ time in his career.

He won the first race in Argentina and then again in Monaco and Canada. Scheckter feels he should have won the Championship in 1977, instead of coming second that year, had the team not suffered so many technical failures and had he not made several mistakes.

1979 Ferrari 312 T4

In 1978, while still racing for Wolf, Scheckter was approached by Enzo Ferrari who wanted to sign him for 1979. The two had met on several occasions previously but never got to the point of agreeing a deal for the South African to join the Scuderia. This time though, a deal was stuck for Jody to be the number one driver for the 1979 season.

When the ’79 season came around, Ferrari’s Scheckter was beaten in the first two races by his team-mate Gilles Villeneuve. That created a lot of pressure for Scheckter who decided he needed to get his head down even more and make something happen. The result was several podiums including second in his native South Africa, as well as wins at Belgium, Monaco and claiming the title in front of the adoring Ferrari fans at Monza.

Scheckter says, ‘It was just fantastic, it could not have been better. Winning a world championship in a Ferrari at Monza and having won Monaco the same year! It doesn’t get better than that.’ This is the car that carried Scheckter to his World Championship in 1979. He bought it at the end of the 1979 season and has owned it ever since.