Hesketh Racing famously burst on the scene at exactly the right time during the 1970s, just when the average Britain needed an antidote to depressing daily news telling of Industrial unrest, multifarious EEC collaboration, high prices caused by oil-producers restricting supplies and a potential coal miners’ strike, writes Ken Davies.
Formula One too was undergoing change with increasing commercialism seeing cars eschew national racing colors in favor of glitzy sponsors’ logos, but Hesketh Racing was different.
Privately funded by a 22-year-old, fiercely patriotic aristocrat with a taste for fine living and a burning desire to shake up the Establishment while making his impecunious prodigy, James Hunt, World F1 Champion.
To add to the team’s mystique, car and transporter stood-out at race circuits in distinctive Hesketh red, white and blue livery which quickly became synonymous with hedonistic hospitality, helicopters, yachts, champagne, pretty girls and Monaco, but all conveyed by the team in a good-natured sense of fun and irony.
That said make no mistake, Lord Hesketh’s stylish playboy facade disguised a highly determined team, expertly managed by Bubbles Horsley and ably assisted by talents such as designer Harvey Postlethwaite, engineer Nigel Stroud and a small number of resourceful mechanics led by Dave ‘Beaky’ Sims.
Having arrived in Formula One 1973 with a rented March 712, Hesketh Racing set about constructing its own car and won the 1974 non-championship International Trophy at Silverstone and then one better, the 1975 Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, which put James Hunt firmly on the road to future stardom.
This new book from Porter Press International, Superbears – The Story of Hesketh Racing, tells the full story of how Hesketh Racing evolved into a winning privateer team, ‘The biggest little team in the world’, which captured media and motor racing public’s imagination.
Thanks to its unique approach, complete with charismatic teddy bear logo, Hesketh will remain forever one of the most evocative, iconic, and popular names in Formula One history.
Proving that fact is often stranger than fiction, this story transports readers from the team’s humble 1972 debut in formula three to its final F1 race in 1978. The book includes candid interviews with key players such as La Patron himself Lord Alexander Hesketh, Anthony ‘Bubbles’ Horsley, Nigel Stroud, Dave ‘Beaky’ Sims, Peter Gaydon, Rupert Keegan, and Frank Dernie.
Illustrated with many unique color and monochrome images from personal scrapbooks, there’s even a chapter devoted to Hesketh motorcycles.
Written by accomplished motoring journalist James Page, a former editor of Classic & Sport Car, Superbears has a foreword by celebrated musician Jools Holland.
The jacketed, fully indexed hardback tome was published April 2023 with 264 pages and over 280 images. Cover price is £90 ISBN: 978-1-913089-33-7. Sadly, Formula One will never see the likes of Hesketh Racing again, whose chic and cool image made them first, albeit unintentionally, to introduce showmanship with a strapline of ‘Racing for Britain and Racing for You’ into Formula One!
© Words by Ken Davies
