F1's mercurial Rodriguez brothers: what could have been?

Surely such success so young made him cocky? “Well, yes,” agrees Jo. “He was never so with me but when you get this overwhelming attention all over the world, I don’t care who you are, it will have an effect. Just like Schumacher four or five years ago, you become unbearable. But after a while you realise, ‘So what?’ and then, like Michael, you become a normal person again. As Ricardo got older he stopped being arrogant.” Hill concurs: “He came across as if he had been through some good social training. They both did. They were great kids.”

Social graces were part of the upbringing in the Rodriguez family. One of Don Pedro’s businesses manufactured containers for the country’s biggest petroleum company. There were plenty of others too and there was said to be a link to a certain Mexican president on account of the politician’s mistress being Don Pedro’s daughter. It was further whispered by some that this led to an arrangement whereby, for a cut, one of Don Pedro’s companies unofficially collected taxes from the country’s brothels.

In Ricardo, Ferrari engineer Mauro Forghieri recalls a young man of some sophistication: “Although he was young he was not immature from a human point of view. He was serious and very determined. He wasn’t as reflective as Pedro and the quality of his driving was still instinctive, but he had a good relationship with people in the team and worked hard.”

That he was not a typically hot-headed Latin was evidenced further when he married an older local girl, Sarah. “She wouldn’t let him out of her sight,” laughs Ramirez, “he couldn’t have played even if he’d wanted to…”

Pedro too, had married young to an older woman, Angelina. After Ricardo’s death the elder brother returned to Mexico and opened a car import business. He would race occasionally for enjoyment, he decided. His brother’s death wasn’t going to stop him doing that. His introspections had brought a fatalistic philosophy. “God decides when your time is,” he would declare.

For the next four years he lived this part-time racing driver existence, doing occasional grands prix with Lotus and Ferrari, competently but without conspicuous success, taking occasional sports car wins and even having a crack at the Indianapolis 500. But, away from the pressures of being measured against Ricardo, something began to develop in Pedro. His driving became more assured, less ragged, and he began to fall in love with racing all over again. “There was definitely some strange effect on Pedro after his brother died,” affirms Hill. “He became quicker, no question.”

“Yes, he became better and better,” agrees Ramirez. “He was more relaxed.” It began to show in his form. Standing in for an injured Jim Clark at the 1966 French Grand Prix, he ran fourth before retirement and in his home Grand Prix he got up to third. It led to an offer from Cooper to fill the vacant second seat at the first race of the ’67 season, in South Africa. He won what was to prove Cooper’s last grand prix victory. It was a lucky win, but it earned him the drive for the rest of the year alongside Jochen Rindt.

From this point on, Rodriguez was a full-time, professional racing driver and his star ascended appropriately. He moved to England and rarely a weekend went by when he wasn’t racing something. At Cooper, Rindt was already acknowledged as one of the quickest in the world and, as such, was a useful barometer of Pedro’s progress. There was not a lot between them, though off-track the two didn’t hit it off.

In fact, fellow drivers rarely got through to Pedro. In the Tasman series of early ’68 Rodriguez drove for BRM, managed by Tim Parnell, who remembers: “We all used to stay at the same hotel – Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart, Graham Hill, Jack Brabham, Chris Amon, Denny Hulme – and we’d all muck in together, lark about, play cricket. But Pedro always kept to himself. I used to ask him about it and he would say that he didn’t want them getting to know him too well. He was quite a serious driver on the track and reckoned that it was better for him if they didn’t know what to make of him in a dice.”

Indeed, he was as hard as nails in a race situation, to the point where he was criticised by other drivers. His fatalism also meant that he held Stewart’s gathering safety movement in disdain which again did little to endear him to his peers. But those with whom he worked saw an entirely different side to him.

“Everyone at BRM thought the world of him,” recalls Parnell, “especially the mechanics. Because there were no airs or graces about him, he never complained, just got on with the job. He was a funny little chap, a bit of a mysterious character, but he commanded a lot of respect.”

There was, though, some Latin fire. “He would sometimes get a bit shirty with the other drivers but the only time I saw him really angry was at some reception in Mexico,” says Parnell. “He had a helluva to-do with some chap in the Mexican government. They were almost having a fight at one point. It was about how his father had been treated and how the family had fallen from grace.” There had been a change in presidency…

In the ’68 BRM, his reputation began to gain momentum — he frequently led in the semi-competitive BRM P126 and P133. It was during this time that his wet weather virtuosity became apparent and his victory, with Lucien Bianchi, at Le Mans in the JW Automotive Ford GT40 owed much to his spooky ability in the heavy rain of the night.

In fact, he became one of the best wet weather drivers the world has ever seen, as good in the rain as a Caracciola, Ickx or Stuck. Never was this more apparent than during his time in the awesome Porsche 917s in 1970 and ’71. In the wet Brands Hatch 1000km race of 1970 his performance was staggering. A stop-go penalty had left him in 12th place. With rain falling and red mist rising he overtook every car in front of him until the lead was his. He then proceeded to rub it in, crossing the line for the last time five laps clear of the entire field. The late John Wyer who ran the 917s for Porsche said at the end of the season: “I think on that day, in those conditions, he was literally unbeatable.” He went on: “He is a calculating driver. He likes to sit back in the early stages and watch the race develop before he stages his attack, which he does with an exquisite sense of timing.” Wyer came to believe, in fact, that Pedro had developed into the best driver in the business, not merely in sports cars.

He produced similarly astonishing drives in the JW 917 in 1971 at Daytona and the Österreichring and such form showed through in F1 too, now that BRM had a competitive car in the P153. He used this to win the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix at the old Spa, soaking up race-long pressure from Chris Amon. “To see him four-wheel drifting around there was a real sight to behold,” remembers Parnell.

He should have won that year’s American Grand Prix too, but ran out of fuel with a lap to go. “He was speechless after that,” says Parnell. “There was a $50,000 prize kind for that race. You have to remember that this was a time when his retainer from BRM was for $10,000, but he got half of any prize money. Money was important to him.”

He might well also have won the wet ’71 Dutch Grand Prix had his fuel pump not played up. As it was, he and fellow wet weather ace Jacky Ickx lapped the entire field. By this time his marriage had petered out. “I don’t know if they ever officially separated,” says Ramirez, “but in his later years he didn’t have much contact with Angelina; she always stayed in Mexico.” Pedro, meanwhile, settled in Bray with his English girlfriend Glenda Foreman and became distinctly Anglicised. He drove around in a Bentley Continental and invariably wore a deerstalker hat.

British racegoers in turn made him a hero, perhaps as a result of that wondrous race at Brands. “We used to get sackfuls of fan mail for him at BRM,” says Parnell, “far more than any other driver we ever had there, even Graham Hill or Jackie Stewart.”

After setting fastest time in testing for the ’71 British Grand Prix, Rodriguez headed for the Norisring in Germany, to drive Herbie Muller’s Ferrari 512M in a minor sports car race. “Oh, I think about that to this day,” says Parnell. “These people kept ringing him from Germany. He was a big name there and they wanted him to drive to bring the crowds in and were offering him more and more money. I said, “For God’s sake Pedro, don’t go.” It was some clapped-out bloody car that had been used by a film company or something. But in the end he couldn’t turn the money down.”

Clapped out car or not, Rodriguez got it into the lead. But on the 12th lap the Ferrari veered sharp left into the barriers and rebounded with huge force into a bridge support. It burst into flames. By the time help arrived, Pedro was beyond hope. Like Ricardo’s accident nine years earlier, there was uncertainty as to just what had happened. Some say he was forced off line by a slow backmarker, others that a tyre burst. Pedro, however, would probably have said it was irrelevant – that it was just God’s will.