Can-Am Challenger

The cockney F1 mechanic who designed and built america’s best Can-Am cars
Peter Bryant

If Pete Bryant’s memoirs are anything to go by, racing mechanics three or four decades back had a riotous time. As an F1 mechanic to among others Salvadori, Amon, Surtees, Stewart and Oliver, Bryant criss-crossed the globe, and inevitably the long, hard hours in the pits were interspersed with japes, trials and dramas. Add in his time at Shelby, as engineer on Mickey Thompson’s barking Indy cars and on Lolas and Shadows in the great era of Can-Am, and the tales are bound to flow. The book is packed with them, some funny, some tragic, such as Dave MacDonald’s awful death at Indy. But the book centres around Ti22 – the titanium Can-Am car Bryant designed and built in 1969. At this point he gets more serious and the funny stories thin out, but it’s a fine description of a small team with innovative ideas trying to make a mark, and the technical challenges facing a racing car designer. There’s a lot which is of engineering interest, but what you’ll remember are the tales of how Bryant saved three people from drowning in a quarry, was locked in a shed with Hill, Surtees and Ireland, how Carel de Beaufort made his father pay for his racing by threatening to jump from the walls of the family castle, and just why the wheels fell off the gendarmes’ police car at Reims one year… GC

Published by Veloce, ISBN 978 1 84584 115 7, £24.99