Some CVs have to be seen to be believed. And with Jackie Oliver’s resume, it’s not entirely clear how he’s fitted it all in to a single career.
Early on he was a race-winning British Saloon Car Championship driver, and he climbed all the way to Formula 1. His stint there nearly brought race victory on more than one occasion, as well as started with the self-described “baptism of fire” of replacing none other than the recently lost Jim Clark at Lotus.
Oliver also was a prolific sportscar racer and won the ‘triple crown’ of the Le Mans 24 Hours, Daytona 24 Hours and the Sebring 12 Hours, as well as took a Can-Am title. He even dabbled in some NASCAR racing.
Then in the late 1970s Oliver began his quarter-century stint as co-founder and boss of the Arrows F1 team, and once again race victory was missed only narrowly and more than once.
After that Oliver’s motorsport career moved into its third act, by spending almost a decade as British Racing Drivers’ Club director, including serving as its chairman. He was instrumental in saving the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, as well as in shaping the venue into the form we know today. Oliver also in the more recent part of his motorsport time has been a regular behind the wheel in classic car racing.
It’s fair to say therefore that what Oliver hasn’t done in motorsport probably isn’t worth doing. We’re grateful that he spared the time to answer readers’ questions and – with him having hit his 80th birthday last year – he remains passionate and articulate about all matters of motorsport and of his own experience and contribution in it. You’ll discover this from reading on.
Question: How did you feel about taking over from Jim Clark at Lotus? Did you think you were on a hiding to nothing?
Steven Nye
Via email
Jackie Oliver: “Colin Chapman [Lotus boss] signed me up on a three-year contract – Formula 3, Formula 2, Formula 1 – in 1966, ’67 and ’68, so it was a very nice progression. But it was quite unusual then, I don’t think there were any Formula 1 teams that had young third drivers, and I was a young driver doing a lot of development and testing work, driving anything, seeing what would break which is the way Colin did his structural design elements.
“So I got to drive lots of cars for Colin both in testing and drove with Graham [Hill] in Formula 2 in ’67, and then Jimmy got killed in our Formula 2 car programme at Hockenheim and the season had already started in ’68. So Jim Endruweit was a great fan of mine but he was just a team manager, and Jim Endruweit said to Colin ‘why don’t we put Jackie in the car?’
“And Colin didn’t really want to do that, and I think the reason why he didn’t want to do it [was] not only had he lost his best driver, he’d lost his best friend, and I was neither of those two things for Colin. But Colin didn’t have any other opportunities because the season has already started, so he reluctantly agreed I should take over. But it was in at the deep end because not only was it the start of the season although I did a lot of the testing with the Formula 1 car, I’d never done
