New Zealand Formula 1 driver Liam Lawson says his hands were still shaking after he took one of the most storied cars in New Zealand motorsport history up the famous hillclimb at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.
The Racing Bulls driver climbed into the Ford GT40 that Bruce McLaren steered to victory in the 1966 Le Mans 24 Hours, the machine that gave Ford its first outright win in the world’s most gruelling endurance race and that carried an all New Zealand crew to the finish. McLaren shared the winning car with fellow Kiwi Chris Amon, and more than half a century later another New Zealander got to feel what it was like behind the wheel.
Lawson told Motorsport.com straight after the run that the experience had left him rattled in the best possible way. “My hands are still shaking. Very, very special, obviously, a lot of New Zealand history in this car,” he said. He was so caught up in the moment that he stayed put long after the drive was over. “That’s why everyone’s out of their cars, and I’m still sitting in there.”
What made the moment even more remarkable is that it was never on the schedule. Lawson spotted the GT40 at the Goodwood paddock, walked up to the owner and asked whether he could drive it. The owner said yes. “I didn’t expect to come here and drive it,” Lawson said. For a driver who spends his working weekends in a modern grand prix car bristling with electronics and downforce, the 1960s sports car was a different animal entirely.
“The feeling you get when driving a car like this is completely… It’s indescribable,” Lawson said. “It’s not like anything that we drive currently: the vibration, the frequency, the noise.” He admitted he could not resist chasing the revs once he was climbing the hill. “You just can’t help yourself when it starts coming up in the upper [rev range], when the car just starts singing, and it’s incredible.”
The car itself is a piece of racing history that means a great deal to New Zealanders in particular. Ford had spent years and a small fortune trying to beat Ferrari at Le Mans, and in 1966 it finally did, with McLaren and Amon leading home a Ford one two three finish. The win is remembered as much for its controversy as its glory, after team orders and a staged finish denied the sister car of Ken Miles and Denis Hulme the outright victory on a countback. Hulme, another New Zealander, would go on to win the 1967 Formula 1 world championship.
Bruce McLaren was already a grand prix winner by the time of that Le Mans triumph and went on to found the McLaren team that still races in Formula 1 today. He died in a testing crash at Goodwood in 1970 at the age of 32, which gives the setting of Lawson’s drive an added weight. For a young New Zealand driver to take one of McLaren’s cars up the same Sussex estate where the great man was killed is the kind of full circle moment that Goodwood, a celebration of motoring history held each year on the Duke of Richmond’s grounds, is built to create.
Lawson had driven a road going version of the GT40 before, but he made clear this was different. Sitting in the actual car that won at Le Mans, wearing the same colours McLaren wore, was a bucket list item he had not expected to tick off. As he put it to reporters at the event, and as 1News and RNZ reported, the whole thing was hard to put into words.
The 24 year old from Hastings has had an eventful few years in Formula 1, moving between the senior Red Bull team and the junior Racing Bulls squad where he currently races, and working to establish himself on the grid. Moments like the one at Goodwood are a reminder of how far he has come from karting in Hawke’s Bay to sharing a lineage with the biggest names in New Zealand motorsport.
For fans back home, the images of Lawson grinning in Bruce McLaren’s Le Mans winner were a rare feel good story in a sport that usually only makes headlines here when things go wrong. Two New Zealand drivers, separated by 60 years, connected by one orange and silver Ford that still sounds, in Lawson’s words, like it is singing.
Did you watch Lawson’s run at Goodwood, or do you remember New Zealand’s golden era at Le Mans? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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