Mingling in this crowd of racing personalities was a tall and curiously youthful-looking blond Swede wearing an ankle-length fur coat complete with an astrakhan collar. Both his wrists bore horrifying scarlet burns, the legacy of a frightening accident at the wheel of the prototype F3 March 693 the previous year at the Montlhery circuit near Paris. He looked much younger than his 27 years.
Outwardly he was a mild-mannered fellow who projected a cautiously unruffled charm. But when the visor on the front of that helmet snapped down, Peterson was transformed into a dazzlingly spectacular automotive acrobat.
The cut-and-thrust of Formula 3 would deliver the defining moment of Ronnie’s emergent career. Now equipped with one of the legendary, short wheelbase, kart-derived Tecno F3 cars, he journeyed to Monaco in 1969 to compete in the prestigious Grand Prix support race. Added piquancy was given to the battle by the fact that Ronnie would be going head-to-head with his arch-rival Reine Wisell, who was driving the works Chevron. Ronnie came home the clear winner.
Throughout his three-year F1 contract with the March team, Mosley was impressed with his loyalty. “He was the only driver I ever met who appreciated just what a risk we were taking offering him a three-year contract,” he confessed to me. “We paid him £2000 in 1970, £5000 in 1971 and £10,000 in 1972. He was totally loyal and would never have dreamed of breaking that commitment.”
“The lure of Lotus proved irresistible”
Yet when that March contract expired, the lure of Lotus proved irresistible. Highly motivated, Ronnie could see that a very real possibility of challenging for the World Championship was now beckoning. Even though moving to Lotus was calculated to put sitting tenant Emerson Fittipaldi’s nose out of joint — he was the reigning title holder, after all — Ronnie grabbed the chance.
Fittipaldi won three races in 1973, Peterson four. But the two Lotus pace-setters spent much of the year inevitably taking points off each other. It allowed Jackie Stewart to dodge through to win his third championship, although the possibility of Fittipaldi retaining his crown remained on the cards right up to the Italian GP at Monza where he shadowed Ronnie for the entire distance, waiting for him to relinquish the lead as his own title bid was now over.
It says much for Peterson’s endearing character and infectious good nature that Fittipaldi attached no blame to Ronnie for his failure to concede the race: “My relationship with Ronnie remained absolutely fine, but it was never quite the same with Colin [Chapman] and, after that, I think it became clear to me that I would have to leave Lotus at the end of the season.”
Yet like so many great drivers, it is not simply the races he won which stand out in the memory. Watching at the Nürburgring in ’74, you could see that Ronnie still had the spark as he threw himself into a four-way fight with Jacky Ickx in the other Lotus, Mike Hailwood’s McLaren and local hero Jochen Mass. After 11 laps Mass’s superb drive in front of his home crowd came to an end when the engine in his Surtees TS16 suddenly failed. That left the two Lotus drivers fighting it out with Mike the Bike and I recall at the time thinking the whole thing seemed luridly precarious…
Disastrously, Mike’s McLaren landed slightly askew after leaping over the crest at Pflanzgarten. It speared right into the guard rail with a ferocious impact which left Hailwood with a badly broken ankle and out of racing for the rest of the season. In fact, Mike the Bike never raced again on four wheels through to his untimely death in 1981.