When a departing F1 legend introduced a new one

The McLaren M23 should be regarded as one of the all-time great Formula 1 cars. It has to be with three world titles – two drivers’ and one constructors’ — and 16 grand prix victories over a world championship career spanning a remarkable six seasons. That longevity makes it a kind of bridge between eras, not least because in its dotage the Cosworth-powered machine set a young Brazilian by the name of Nelson Piquet on the road to super-stardom.

The Gordon Coppuck-designed masterpiece was given its first start by Dennis Hulme, the 1967 F1 title winner, at the 1973 South African Grand Prix at Kyalami. Yet its final world championship appearances came at the back end of 1978 with Piquet, a driver who was still racing – and winning – in F1 in 1991.

In between times the M23 won championships with Emerson Fittipaldi (1974) and James Hunt (1976) and grands prix with Peter Revson, Hulme and Jochen Mass. Jody Scheckter and Gilles Villeneuve also raced a car that sealed McLaren the constructors’ title in 1974.

Piquet joined the list of greats drivers to race a great racing car at the behest and with the backing of Bernie Ecclestone. In the summer of 1978, the Brabham boss had identified Piquet, who was on course to win the premier British Formula 3 series, as a star of the future. He had his eye on him for a seat for the following year and arranged for him to graduate to F1 in the ageing McLaren with the British privateer BS Fabrications squad.

“We got a call from Bernie, saying, ‘There’s this Brazilian kid in F3, I want you put him out in some F1 races’,” recalls Dave Sims, team manager at BS Fabs. “I want to bring him on a bit and see how he goes. I’ll pay for it!”

BS Fabs was in a position to oblige. It was running former US Marine Brett Lunger and had a spare car: the American, who was sponsored by the Chesterfield tobacco brand, had switched from the M23 he’d started racing with BS Fabs the previous year to a later McLaren M26 after four races in 1978.

Sims remembers Piquet’s excitement on seeing the M23 he would be racing when he pitched up at the team’s workshops in Dunstable up the M1 from London.

“This young kid came along and said, ‘Wow, is this my F1 car?’” recalls Sims. “The car was up on stands and we sat him in there, stuffing coats behind him trying to work out the right position for the steering and the pedals. When we were finished, he wouldn’t get out: he sat in there all morning, pretending to change gear and making engine noises!

“I’m not sure he was too interested in the finer elements of the seat fitting. He just wanted to get out there in the car.”

“Nelson had never driven an F1 car before, but he was coming up with all these ideas. We thought, ‘bloody hell!’ We reckoned he would be going places” Dave Sims

Sims and his bosses at BS Fabs, Bob Sparshott and John ‘Ace’ Woodington, needn’t have been concerned about the behaviour of their new charge up at the workshop. When he did get out in the McLaren for the first time, he impressed from the get-go. Piquet had his first taste of F1 machinery with a run in the M23 at a mid-week test session at Silverstone in July.

“Immediately you could see that the guy was good,” says Sims. “It wasn’t just that he was quick straight away, it was his understanding of the car. His feedback and explanation of what the car was doing was astounding. He’d say, ‘Maybe we can try this, maybe we can try that’.

“Nelson had never driven an F1 car before, but he was coming up with all these ideas. We thought, ‘bloody hell!’ We reckoned he would be going places.”

Piquet completed a morning in the McLaren at Silverstone, before heading up to Donington Park to test his Ralt-Toyota RT1 F3 car run by Greg ‘PeeWee’ Siddle ahead of the upcoming round of the BP-sponsored British Automobile Racing Club series. Second place the following weekend would seal him the championship with three of the 17 races to go.

Piquet had made his F1 debut for Ensign at Hockenheim before making his first start in the M23 at the Austrian GP

Photo by: LAT Photographic

Those laps in the M23 at Silverstone were his only preparation for what turned out to be an early F1 debut. He was scheduled to race the BS Fabs M23 in the Austrian, Dutch and Italian grands prix, the last three European races on the calendar, but he received a late call-up to drive for Ensign in the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim two weeks ahead of Austria.

The Ensign-Cosworth N177 had been temporarily vacated by Derek Daly, who’d made his debut in the car the race before at Brands Hatch for the British GP. He then baulked at signing the contract for three years put in front of him.

Daly and his people thought they’d call the bluff of team boss Mo Nunn, whose reaction was to see through his threat to bring in someone else to drive the car. Ecclestone was almost certainly behind that deal to bring Piquet to Ensign: he had and would bail out the team on a number of occasions and Nunn was a key ally in his bid to gain control of F1 as boss of the Formula One Constructors’ Association.

Piquet, in spite of his limited experience, made the grid at Hockenheim, as he would in all three of the grands prix he contested in the McLaren. It was a time of non-qualifiers – as well as non-prequalifiers – courtesy of the large F1 fields.

Piquet wouldn’t see the finish in the Ensign, and nor would he make the chequered flag in his first two races in the M23 at the Oesterreiching and Zandvoort. He went off on a wet track two laps into the Austrian race, which was then red-flagged after four. In the Netherlands, he was out after 16 laps with a transmission problem.

For the Zandvoort race, the BS Fabs M23 was now in Marlboro colours like the factory M26s: Piquet had raced it in its previous Chesterfield livery at the Oesterriechring. Sims isn’t sure of the back story to the deal: “We were just told by Bernie to put the car in Marlboro colours.”

Piquet registered his first F1 finish in his final outing in the McLaren, coming home a commendable ninth and on the lead lap at the end of the tragic race in which Lotus driver Ronnie Peterson sustained the injuries that would result in his death the following morning. The Brazilian was absolutely bushed at the end of the 40 laps.

With his M23 sporting a new livery at Zandvoort, Piquet made it through pre-qualifying and got onto the back of the grid in 26th before being stranded by transmission woes

Photo by: Motorsport Images

“Nelson’s biggest complaint about the M23 was the heavy steering; he really struggled physically,” explains Sims. “At the end of the race at Monza, he told us his shoulders ached and his arms ached, and that he was sorry he couldn’t go any faster.

“He was a boy in a man’s sport. I think it hit him that he had to work on his strength and fitness.”

Ecclestone had seen enough: less than two weeks after Monza it was announced that Piquet would be racing for Brabham in 1979 alongside Niki Lauda. A week later it came out that he would be joining the team early at the championship finale in Canada on the new Circuit Ile Notre-Dame in Montreal at the wheel of a third Brabham-Alfa Romeo BT46.

A legendary car had waved its farewells to F1 proper, while a driver who would go on to achieve the same status had said his hellos in the car

Piquet’s outing at Monza wasn’t the last race for contemporary machinery in which the McLaren M23 competed. There were still outings to come in the Aurora-sponsored British Formula 1 Championship into 1980 and, with a Repco V8 in the back, the Australian Driver’s or Gold Star Championship, as well as Can-Am in North America with all-enveloping bodywork. But that was that for the old girl in terms of the F1 world championship.

A legendary car had waved its farewells to F1 proper, while a driver who would go on to achieve the same status had said his hellos in the car. BS Fabs was right about Piquet: three world titles would follow for the skinny kid who’d been so excited to climb aboard a grand prix car for the first time.

Piquet’s first finish came at Monza on the final world championship outing for the McLaren M23 that had made its debut six years prior

Photo by: Motorsport Images