Podcast: Blash opens up on F1 career, time with Whiting & more

When we went over to pit stops, for example, it wasn’t just a matter of introducing a pit stop. First of all, it was the type of refuelling apparatus that we needed, what needed to be done in the fuel tank. We were putting in fuel at the most dangerous pressure you can imagine. We could actually more or less break a car in half if the breather wasn’t fitted correctly. The next thing is we’re going to change tyres at the same time, which was obviously part of the equation. Then we went over to air jacks. Then we had wheel guns. Nobody had wheel guns. Then we needed a tyre heater. So we built an old telephone box and just had a gas heater pumping in.

There was all sorts of dramas because we’d end up heating just one part of the tyre and maybe melting the tyres. But Gordon was into everything as well, so we could come up with ideas and Gordon would always be able to kind of finalise them. We were the only team to have a motorised pit vehicle to transport the tyres around. Everyone else was pushing barrows around, struggling with fuel. There we were just driving past, and the funny thing is that actually was a centre-seat vehicle, a little bit like McLaren’s F1 road car. In fact, I’ve only just thought about that.

We were the first team to have an articulated vehicle and we were the first team that looked after our own little catering. We were the first with carbon fibre brakes. As I say, Gordon was right behind all of this. We were the first team to actually have a complete rear-end, so we could actually build it back in the factory. We could have the engine, the gearbox, the uprights, etc all ready for the race, and that would be our race engine. So on a Saturday night, within 45 minutes, we would have a completely new race rear-end on and the car was ready to go, which used to really wind the other teams up because we would be the first to leave the paddock. We were the first to have music, similar to Red Bull at the moment.

We would come up with all sorts of ideas and I remember, I think it was in South Africa, we had Renault next door to us and we were fighting for the World Championship. We had various parts that would disappear overnight. So we used to set a few things up. We left a setup sheet within the view of Renault and we left it so that they could actually put their hands through the fence and take it. We just marked where it was and of course the next morning, it was in a different position and we had put down ridiculous cambers and casters etc. and of course we were quicker than Renault. I love these games.

TC: You said that Brabham sailed pretty close to the wind. Can you just give me some examples of where you perhaps pushed the limits a bit far?

HB: Well, I can’t give those secrets away. I think I think it’s well known that we used to sometimes have heavy bodywork and that bodywork would go on at the end of practice or the end of the race. I think the real classic maybe had to be the water-cooled brakes. In those days you could top up your fluids at the end of the race before you were weighed again. We had these lovely tanks. They must have held about five gallons and going round to the start of the race, you push the button and the little electric motor would just dump all of that water out and then at the end of the race, you’ve got to top up the water tanks.

TC: Do you think everyone was playing these games?

HB: I think the majority of the top teams were playing. Tyrrell unfortunately went a step too far when they were pumping lead into their tyres during the pit stop. I know of a team that was pumping water into their tyres. We used to have a rather heavy seat that took two people, our two strongest mechanics, to lift into the car in preparation for weighing at the end of the race. There were lots of little tricks.

But the tricks today are basically all computerised and obviously the cars are scrutineered from top to bottom. It’s so restricted, whereas back in those Brabham days it was very relaxed and it was so easy to do things that you shouldn’t do. We had a very special lightweight Monte Carlo qualifying car. Of course, in those days you didn’t have to race with the car that you qualified in. I think that must have had the smallest fuel tank, a little motorcycle battery. It wouldn’t have been able to do more than six laps.

TC: You worked with Niki Lauda as well. Clearly a brilliant driver, but one moment in Niki’s career I wanted to ask you about was Montreal, 1979. He was on a big contract with Brabham. He was the number one driver. I think quite a lot was made at the time of him earning two million dollars a year, which was far and away the biggest salary on the grid. Yet he comes in after a practice session and says ‘Bernie, I’ve had enough’. What do you remember of that?

HB: I think it was after the first practice session. Charlie was actually his chief mechanic and he gave Charlie a list of jobs to do. Then he got me to walk down with him because back in those days we used to be based about 400 yards away where the boat sheds were in Montreal at the bottom of the lake. We had a small motorhome there and he was asking me where Bernie was. As we were walking down, he said ‘I’m not getting back in the car, you know that don’t you?’ I said ‘what?!’ He said ‘no I’ve had enough. I’m going to go and buy that aeroplane.’

Now, just before we get back to the motorhome with Bernie, I knew the chief training captain for British Caledonian and he arranged, when we were racing at Long Beach, to go to the McDonnell Douglas factory. I went with Niki and we managed to get him into a simulator. We met someone who had been to the moon and driving back, Niki said to me ‘I’m going to buy one of those.’ And it was a laugh and a joke.

Then when we were walking down, that’s when he said to me, ‘I’m going to buy that aeroplane,’ which, needless to say, that’s exactly what he did. That was the start of Lauda Air. But anyway, we arrived down into the caravan, walked in and he told Bernie that’s it.

TC: Do you think Bernie was expecting it?

HB: No, I don’t think so. But Bernie is also such a cool customer that you would never tell. It wasn’t a very long conversation but I remember Bernie saying ‘well leave your overalls and helmet here because I’ve got to find someone to drive the car.’ And there was Ricardo Zunino outside. Low and behold, he was a Formula 1 driver and Niki literally just walked out. Nobody knew what was going on. Niki changed and just disappeared.

TC: So were you surprised when Niki came back a few years later with McLaren?

HB: I was disappointed because I would have liked him to have come back with us, and especially that it was our other driver, his ex-team mate John Watson, with him. I was very close to John and very, very close to Niki. Especially when they were winning races, that really hurt because we were going through a bit of a hard time ourselves.

TC: Was Niki the best driver you ever worked with?

HB: He was maybe the most intelligent. John Watson was a quick driver and when he was driving alongside Niki, he was often quicker. Very difficult to say but, as an all-rounder, maybe Niki was number one out of the drivers that I’ve actually worked with.

TC: One more driver I wanted to ask you about was Carlos Reutemann.

HB: Carlos was a lovely guy, but unfortunately he wasn’t consistent. He was very up and down and as soon as there was a problem or a hiccup, then he was down. He gave away the World Championship unfortunately, when he was with Williams, at Las Vegas in 1981, which he gave to us. He should have won that.

We all liked him very much. I’m still in contact with him. I think the last time we saw him was four or five years ago in Brazil. He didn’t like the limelight and kept himself to himself, but a very nice guy. I wouldn’t put Carlos with Nelson Piquet, or John Watson, or Niki Lauda. I wouldn’t put him in that group.

TC: We’ve talked about some of the innovations and the games that were played, but what about the Brabham fan car?

HB: It was very good wasn’t it? And it was completely legal. The FIA came along and checked the car at the Chessington factory. They were trying to measure the downforce of the car while the engine was running. I don’t know, but somehow one of the skirts was held up and the car didn’t move.

TC: So for people who don’t know, this was a hugely innovative car, where a fan literally sucked it onto the ground. Could you actually see it being physically sucked to the ground, even if it if it was stationary?

HB: Yes, you could.

TC: Of course, it goes to the Swedish Grand Prix in ‘78 and cleans up.

HB: Yeah, unfortunately Bernie withdrew the car after that because he was, at that particular time, more looking after the future of Formula 1 rather than the future of Brabham. Looking back on it, I can fully understand. But if you were Brabham, after all the hours and the effort that went into that, it was very, very, disappointing.

TC: How did Bernie justify that decision to you guys?

HB: Basically all the other teams, I think they possibly would have just boycotted the next race. He had to protect the business of Formula 1.

TC: Can we just end this by talking about the FIA? We need to go back to Brabham, don’t we? Because you hired Charlie Whiting as a mechanic in 1978. You’d go on to work with Charlie for the next 40 odd years. Did you hit it off immediately with him?

HB: Yes, I did. That’s funny, just prior to Charlie’s passing, we were talking about that. One of the first tests that he went to, I was sharing a room with Charlie. We got on very well because our backgrounds were very, very similar in some ways. He went through the ranks and ended up obviously as chief engineer. Then when he went to the FIA, that was more or less as a scrutineer and that was for WEC. I’m not sure what it was called in those days, but it was SportsCar racing.

Then he moved to Formula 1 as scrutineer, really. When I became involved, which I think was a year later, I had a phone call from Bernie saying ‘you’re going to be helping the FIA next year.’ I’m with Yamaha at this point. ‘No, no, no. Don’t worry. We’ve got this new chap. He doesn’t know too much about the racing, he’s a submarine captain’.

TC: Roger Lane-Nott…

HB: Correct. The idea was that I would assist him. I think on my pass I was listed as FIA Race Director advisor and Roger obviously didn’t know anything about the actual circuits, or the actual running of it, because he was a very keen enthusiast and he was telling me how he used to, slightly illegally, bring the bring the submarine up as high as possible so they could hear the radio to hear the Grands Prix.

When he left the Navy in Portsmouth, he was dressed in his whites and he was in the McLaren F1 road car, with a trailer, leaving Portsmouth. The photo appeared on the front page of The Times and The Telegraph. It was big news. I met with Roger beforehand. We kept in contact and for one year I was doing that. That’s when I was also asked to be the starter, so we made Charlie the starter.

Unfortunately, things never really worked out with Roger. I couldn’t be the Race Director because I was still working with Yamaha and I was very committed with Yamaha. I recommended Charlie and that was it. Then Charlie was the Race Director. I was only going to do one more year with Charlie, advising and helping him because he’d never worked in Race Control before. Then 23 years later, we were still at it!

TC: Why did you keep going?

HB: Because I enjoyed it. The only thing that I will say is, I’m involved with motorcycle racing and I’m involved with a team. With a team, you have your highs and lows and at the end of the race meeting, you walk out on a low and discuss what went wrong. Then you’ll work out where you’ve won the race and that’s a great high.

In Race Control, the only thing at the end of the race was Charlie and myself would shake each other’s hands and say ‘we survived’. When you’re in Race Control, you can’t show those emotions. You can’t sit in Race Control and bang the desk. You have to just remain calm. We couldn’t allow ourselves to become passionate about a particular car or a particular driver. The only thing about working in Race Control is it’s not emotional. When you’re with a team, it is emotional.

TC: Talking of emotions, obviously Charlie passed away a few years ago now. When you think of him now, what comes to mind?

HB: I think of Charlie every day actually. There’s always something. Going to circuits now, they’ve put up plaques for Charlie. I was down in Barcelona for my World Superbikes three weeks ago and one little plaque is the ‘Charlie and Herbie office’ and the complete Race Control in Barcelona is known as the Charlie Whiting Race Control. Everyone had so much respect for Charlie. There’s only one Bernie and there was only one Charlie.

To replace Charlie, which is what I’ve always said, you need four people to replace Charlie. That’s how dedicated, smart, clever and hard-working in particular that Charlie was. Charlie would never switch off, apart from a few glasses of wine. But even with the few glasses of wine, we were always talking about where we could make things better. The whole time that I was with Charlie, he never once was in Race Control for the start.

TC: I always thought that was a mad thing because most incidents happen at the start or just afterwards. And Charlie, the Race Director, would be walking up the pit lane going from the start gantry back to Race Control. He could rely on you, couldn’t he?

HB: Oh yeah. I’ll never forget, we had a few classics and one was Spa 1998, where we had the big accident after Turn 1 on Lap 1. I just said ‘red flag, red flag!’ Charlie was in the position to do the red flag on the start podium and he said ‘why was it a red flag?’. I said ‘RED FLAG! Don’t ask why!’

But could Charlie ever make a mistake? Yes. If you remember, if a car was starting from the pit lane, you would wait until the cars have come past the pit exit and then you would press the green button to allow the car that was starting from the pits. At Silverstone 1999, the old start podium was right over the track and you had circuit advertising on both sides. So there was only a small hole that Charlie could look through to see when the car had actually exited the pits. He could control the pit exit light from there. Charlie pressed the button to let the car go and all of a sudden it was red flag. He’d pressed the wrong button and Michael Schumacher had his major accident. So everyone thought the red flag was for Michael, but the red flag actually came out before Michael’s accident. So we had a little bit of luck on our side.

TC: Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard that he passed away in Melbourne in 2019?

HB: Yeah, unfortunately I was in Thailand for World Superbikes and I didn’t have my phone switched on. I woke up in the morning. First thing I did was just open up my iPad and saw this news. I remember I closed the iPad and thinking ‘yeah, I’m dreaming.’ Then I really woke up with a startle. The first person that I could get hold was Tim Shenkin. I didn’t realise that they’d been trying to get hold of me during the night but my phones were switched off, because they didn’t have the phone number for his wife, Juliette.

I phoned Tim Shenkin and Tim said ‘I dreaded your call,’ and that’s when I knew I was just in utter shock. Two weeks before, we were in Geneva together. He was my best mate and when you think about it, however many years we were together, every night we’d have dinner together, we’d drink together. So many rules and regulations were made after a glass of wine. As I say, total utter shock.

TC: Now, if you two were one of motor racing’s great pairings, Herbie Blash and Charlie Whiting. What about Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley? Why do you think those two were so devastatingly effective when Bernie was running Formula 1 and Max Mosley was president of the FIA?

HB: Well, again, you’ve got to remember that Bernie was very, very close to Charlie, and Max exactly the same. Max relied on Charlie for running Formula 1 and Bernie relied on Charlie to run Formula 1.

TC: Do you think Max and Bernie wouldn’t have been as effective together had Charlie not been there?

HB: I hate to think if Charlie hadn’t have been there, I really can’t see where Formula 1 would be today. There’s nobody I could think of that could have done Charlie’s job, or that both Max and Bernie together would have supported.

TC: And Herbie, in this post-Bernie era of Formula 1 with Liberty Media and the Americans running the sport now, how different do you think it is?

HB: You’ve got to remember that in Bernie’s time, we didn’t have the social media, which has obviously changed so much. I have to say dear Stefano, who I’ve got a lot of time for, and I’ve known from when I believe Stefano was 14 or 15, when he was my car park attendant at Imola. That just shows what a racer Stefano is, that he’s been involved from the very early teenage years up to the position he’s in at the moment, doing a great job, and Liberty is the future.

TC: Herbie, so many great stories. Thank you so much for your time, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you. My final question to you is this: fundamentally, are you a car man or a bike man?

HB: I’m a six-wheeler!

Here’s full podcast: https://audioboom.com/posts/8343631-herbie-blash-race-mechanic-to-race-control