Gunnar Nilsson: Once in a lifetime...

The momentum snowballed faster when, part way through the F3 season, Ken Moore received March’s permission to install Nilsson in his Rapid Movements Formula Atlantic Chevron B29. In between F3 battles with Ribeiro, the Swede claimed the Atlantic series, winning four of his five races. Moore had no doubt just how good Nilsson was: “I saw him as a potential world champion. He was dominant against some extremely good guys. He would get pole and win races in the wet or the dry. He once got pole with a major brake problem, and he once won a race after the gearknob came off on the first lap. He could relate what the car was doing to our mechanic Tony Harvey. He was just a complete racing driver.”

Harvey concurs. “He knew what I was thinking and I him. When he came into the pits I would know what he was going to ask for. He was sensitive with the car too. If I’d put half an inch on the roll bar he’d go out, come back and it was logged in then. He would know how the car felt.”

Such conviction wasn’t universal, however. “I think he was going to be good,” says his F3 engineer Robin Herd, “but not perhaps true World Championship material.” A judgement that Witty, in retrospect, goes along with: “Not a super-talent, but probably a solid number two who could win Grands Prix.” Though Phillips, now team manager at Jordan Grand Prix, points out that: “He didn’t do many Grands Prix but he won one of them. That must say something.” But it is Andretti, who drove alongside Nilsson throughout 1976 and 77, who was in perhaps the best position to judge: “Well, although there was a little too much haste there, I think he had the right stuff. You cannot make a slow guy hustle, but you can make someone slow down in order to go faster. And he always grasped the opportunity – like in Belgium. And he had some fire. He probably needed to get his confidence up a bit more, get some more results and he definitely had a future.” Except sadly, he didn’t.

Another of those who thought he had it was Frank Williams. It was Williams who gave Nilsson his first taste of a Formula One car. At the end of ’75 at Goodwood, Gunnar climbed aboard the Williams FW03. “Despite it being neither a particularly reliable nor competitive car,” remembers Williams, “his driving confirmed my impressions.” To the extent that a Williams contract was proffered. And refused. Nilsson was going to continue with March in F2. No budget required.

But in the space of a hectic few weeks, in which he was used as a bargaining pawn in negotiations between March and Lotus over Ronnie Peterson’s 1976 drive, Nilsson became a Lotus Formula One driver without having to bother with F2 at all.

“Gunnar’s deal doesn’t happen and he ends up in F1! Only Gunnar” Danny Sullivan

In his third Grand Prix, in Spain, he finished 3rd. He’d made it. For Nilsson’s erstwhile F3 rival Danny Sullivan, it was typical: “I was supposed to take his Rapid Movements Atlantic drive over for ’76, he was going F2. Then my deal falls through as the team quits, leaving me with nothing. Gunnar’s deal doesn’t happen and he ends up in F1! Only Gunnar.”

Nilsson and Sullivan became close friends, sharing a flat in London for a time. “He never had any money with him, he was so tight,” recalls Sullivan. ‘And he’d have all this big talk about how he could drink. Yet after about three glasses of vodka he’d be face-down in his soup.”

Andretti, too, recalls high jinks at Gunnar’s Stockholm pad with unabated glee. “We’d leave the car somewhere, go drinking and raisin’ hell and, not wanting to drive back, we’d steal bicycles to get home. At the end of the two weeks we had seven bicycles in the lobby and we didn’t know where the hell we’d parked the car!”

It was at one of the races towards the end of the season that the Professor took a look at him. He insisted on a proper examination; an appointment was made for after the final race of the season, the Japanese Grand Prix. In that race he retired with a severely bent gear linkage. “That is a little pointer,” says Glenn Waters, “that there was something wrong. You couldn’t bend a piece of 41/30 tube like that if you stood there all day with a sledgehammer and vice. I think he was having to put so much physical effort into just driving the car by that stage.”

Nilsson had already agreed terms for 1978 to drive for the still-secret new Arrows team. He felt the need to step out of Andretti’s shadow. Andretti also says Nilsson was not accorded due respect by Colin Chapman. In the event the diagnosis saw to it that Nilsson never even sat in the Arrows. Carcinoma of the testes – a cancer that spreads with lethal speed. If caught early, there is hope. Nilsson had secondary tumours by the time he was diagnosed. He was installed in a private ward of Charing Cross Hospital in January and would move between there and a nearby recuperation flat for the remaining 10 months of his life.

Sullivan returned from the Tasman series soon after Nilsson’s chemo and radiation therapy course had begun. He was shocked to the core by the appearance of the friend he had left looking perfectly fit two months before: “He looked like a concentration camp victim. The transformation was devastating.” Mrs Nilsson, Phillips, Witty, Sullivan, Petersens and Gunnar’s girlfriend Christina devoted virtually all their time administering to Nilsson’s needs. “I’ll never forget the final time I took him to the hospital,” remembers Sullivan. “The flat was up one short flight of stairs and it took me over an hour to get him down to the car. He was so frail I couldn’t pick him up, so he had to go down the stairs one at a time on his butt. After two stairs he was exhausted.

“Yet Gunnar thought it was very sad that he was the oldest person in the hospital. He saw all these kids with cancer and that upset him very much.”

His nurse Jackie Critchley (who later married Andrew Ferguson, an active figure in the Nilsson Campaign) was captivated: “Although it was a harrowing time I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much. He had us running round after him, breaking all sorts of rules. Everyone orbited around him, not because he expected them to they just did.”

The initiative for the Gunnar Nilsson Appeal came from a doctor keen to acquire a linear accelerator for more targeted destruction of cancerous cells. He knew Nilsson’s name would do wonders. Remembers Phillips, “Gunnar’s answer was always the same: ‘Yes, when I’ve conquered this, not before’.” But even Nilsson gained a sense of futility when the cancer reached his brain. Not long after, Peterson died of complications arising from an accident in the Italian Grand Prix. Gunnar gathered his last shreds of strength and flew to Sweden for the funeral. On his return he had a telephone line installed in his room against hospital regulations and set up the Gunnar Nilsson Appeal to raise £360,000, refusing more powerful painkillers to make the final few calls. The appeal raised £13 million within nine months and though there is no active campaign now, the fund still received £12,000 in private donations last year.

Before turning in on his final night, Nilsson looked at Petersens and said, “Thanks for all your help.” He died in the early hours of the morning. Mario Andretti, who said Nilsson was his first real friend among racing drivers, could not face the prospect of the funeral. “Everyone was left with this huge emptiness,” recalls Jackie Ferguson, “because he was such a larger than life character. But what I remember most is just laughing all the time. He was a person you only meet once in a lifetime.”