Peter Revson: All work no playboy

Even Andretti was angered. “I loved and respected Peter and actually felt bad for him,” he said. “If anyone deserved to win that race, it was him. But Steve McQueen would have wrongly received all the accolades… He wasn’t anywhere near as quick as Peter. McQueen did the minimum amount of driving required in order to be classified, but Revson did the lion’s share.” Indeed, Andretti says the reason he was able to overhaul the Porsche at the end was Revson’s exhaustion at this punishing track.

But all those years of paying his dues were rewarded in 1971. At Indianapolis he qualified his McLaren M16 on pole, a mile per hour faster than anyone else. In the race he lacked the pace of Mark Donohue, who led before retiring, leaving Al Unser to win from Revson. Judging Revson’s talent, Donohue was his usual, honest self: “I was the better developer, but Peter was a better driver.”

But it was in Can-Am that his career finally took off. Equipped with a works McLaren M8F, the results flowed. In 10 meetings he missed the podium twice, taking four wins and the championship, the first American to do so. He even returned to F1 briefly, as driver of a third Tyrrell at Watkins Glen, but retired on the first lap. But his achievements were enough to persuade Teddy Mayer that Peter deserved another shot at the top level.

And so, aged 33 and with five world championship Grands Prix in eight seasons to his name, in 1972 Peter Revson became a McLaren Formula 1 driver.

Still the suggestion that he was there more for his money than his pace followed him, something his contemporary John Surtees is keen to refute. “I admired his style. He was quick, smooth, consistent and in the McLaren on merit, not because of the sponsorship he brought. You had to be serious. The cars were difficult and the races dangerous, so you couldn’t afford to play at it. He was an intelligent, thoughtful man with a fine sense of humour too.”

But there was no denying he had money, was conspicuously handsome and a racing driver. Company was rarely hard to find. Did the fact that he clearly enjoyed the attention make him the playboy of legend? “Peter was wealthy, an F1 driver and, unlike Jackie Stewart, a very good-looking man,” says none other than Jackie Stewart. “So there was never any shortage of women, but they were nice ladies and he treated them respectfully. In that regard he wasn’t a playboy at all.”

“The image of him as a playboy is totally wrong. He was a thoughtful and hard-working”

Jochen Mass, one the most intelligent F1 drivers I have ever met, echoes Jackie’s views precisely: “He was of course a millionaire, a great-looking guy and an F1 driver, so he could have pretty much any girl he chose, but the image of him as a playboy is totally wrong. He was a thoughtful, hard-working man who’d got to the top entirely on merit.”

Not that he was quite there yet. Peter did well, especially since team-mate Denny Hulme was a former champion and a McLaren man through and through; but on the eight occasions where they both finished, Hulme was ahead on six. In qualifying it was closer and towards the end of the season he outqualified Hulme four times out of five, including a fine pole at Mosport Park. By the season’s end he was fifth, beaten only by three world champions and Jacky Ickx. No shame there.

It is perhaps now worth reflecting on the workload Revson was prepared to shoulder.

In 1972 he took on not only a full season of F1 but also drove an Alfa 33 prototype at Daytona, Sebring, Brands Hatch, Le Mans and Zeltweg. Then add nine Can-Am meetings requiring weekly commutes across the Atlantic and three Indycar rounds too, at Indianapolis, Pocono and Ontario. Such a schedule would have broken a cavalier dilettante.

And so to 1973, Peter’s last full year. By his own admission he was not young any more and said he had at most three years to realise his dream of winning the F1 championship. And it was still a realistic aim for at the time he was four years younger than was Andretti when he won in 1978. But if he didn’t make it, he’d leave.

His relationship with Mayer had been brittle at times and was now destabilised by the recruitment of Jody Scheckter as a third driver. The young South African was widely regarded as the hottest of hotshots and Revson feared his new rival would replace him.

Then François Cevert died at Watkins Glen. In the race Revson’s clutch failed again, but he got the car going and managed to drag the M23 from dead last to fifth at the flag. Shortly after he travelled to Laguna Seca, met Don Nichols and signed for Shadow.

Revson did so knowing 1974 was to be a year of transition, but he liked both Nichols and John Logan, the president of Universal Oil Products who sponsored the team.

He qualified an encouraging fourth in Argentina in the new DN3, but tangled with Jean-Pierre Jarier’s DN1 on the first lap. In Brazil his engine overheated. Then came Kyalami, and on March 22 the end of Peter Revson’s story. He had just celebrated his 35th birthday and, by any objective measure, was still getting better.

I’ll leave the last words to the man who replaced him at McLaren. Speaking softly from America, recalling a memory that clearly affects him to this day, Emerson Fittipaldi told me, “Peter was such a credit to US motor racing. So fast in the car yet he carried himself so well when he was out of it. If he wasn’t quite at the top of the sport when he died, I’d say he was getting there. All he needed was a little more consistency. I was just behind him when he was killed. It was a total disaster.”

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If you haven’t already, do get a copy of Speed with Style. It’s not an expensive book and you may share my view that it’s the greatest racing biography ever written. Even if you don’t, you will certainly understand the meaning of that title. This is not the story of a man laying claim to fabulous fashion sense as well as world-class pace. It speaks instead of how Peter Revson, although given all the resources to live the life of a cavalier trustafarian, instead elected to pursue his passion with courage, modesty and dignity, making up for a talent that wasn’t the greatest by trying harder than anyone else.

Read it and you’ll learn a lot about Peter Revson the racing driver, but a whole lot more about Peter Revson the man. And impressive though the former is, it is as the latter that he best deserves to be remembered.