Shadow DN11 01 v02.pub

D OSSIER
S HADOW DN11-01
Alan Henry
Editor: Allen Brown
Photograph credits. The picture on the front cover of Geoff
Lees at Long Beach in 1980 is copyright LAT Photographic and is
used with permission.
Copyright: All text is copyright Allen Brown 2010.
O LD R ACING C ARS . COM
P AGE 3
S HADOW DN11-01
The Shadow DN11 represented the final F1
gasp of the Grand Prix team founded by
American motor racing entrepreneur Don
Nichols whose cars contested the world
championship from 1973 to 1981. Three of
these Cosworth DFV-propelled cars fitted
with Hewland gearboxes were built at the
Image to follow
start of 1981, but only one ever managed to
qualify for a race: that year’s South African
GP at Kyalami where the British driver Geoff
Lees just scraped onto the back of the grid,
running at a modest pace in the pack before
a suspension failure sent him off the road
and into the trackside catch fencing. The
Shadow DN11 was typical of a certain genre of the time, a Cosworth ‘special’ from a team which
had consistently lacked the resource or engineering capability to compete consistently at the
front of the grid. A not unattractive looking machine, the DN11 flickered only briefly across the
F1 stage before its light was extinguished.
D RIVER
Born on 1 May 1951, near Kingsbury, Warwickshire, Geoff Lees was one of those drivers who had the talent to
make the big time, but never got a decent opportunity in F1. Certainly the Shadow did not represent such an
opportunity team even though he had the dubious distinction of being the only competitor to qualify one of the
arthritic DN11s for the start of a race, in this case the 1980 South African GP at Kyalami.
A Formula Ford champion in the mid-1970s, Geoff soon graduated to F3 at the wheel of a works Chevron, then
tackled the Aurora British F1 national series and a few Can-Am outings while taking any F1 opportunities for a
stand-in role which presented themselves. His best result in F1 was seventh in the 1979 German GP at Hockenheim at the wheel of a Tyrrell 009 standing in for Jean-Pierre Jarier. The following year he was invited to replace
Johansson in the Shadow squad after the first two races of the season, qualifying 25th out of 28 at Kyalami and
then crashing due to suspension failure after just eight laps. He failed to make the cut at Long Beach, then stayed
on with the new DN12 for three more fruitless races. He subsequently drove once for Ensign and qualified at
Zandvoort only to be eliminated in a collision with Vittorio Brambilla.
In 1981, he won the European Formula Two crown driving a works Ralt-Honda and, frustrated by a lack of
opportunities, he headed to Japan where he enjoyed a long career in F2, becoming a respected driver, winning the
F2 title in 1983. In 1987 an unlikely lifeline was thrown his way when, aged 36, he was recalled to test drive for
Williams and, briefly, there seemed a chance he might get a drive. He did not, but Lees did become a valued
member of the Toyota endurance racing team for whom he very nearly won Le Mans in 1998. He also earned a
respected reputation driving for the Lister Storm sports car team, and had a rewarding time with the GTC team
racing their McLaren F1 GTR.
P AGE 4
S HADOW DN11-01
S HADOW DN11 TEAM DRIVERS
Although DN11-01 was not raced by Stefan Johansson and David Kennedy, it was their spare car at the South
American races and it is likely that they drove it there or in testing before the start of the season.
STEFAN JOHANSSON
Stefan Johansson was born on 8 September 1956, in Växjö, Sweden, and his outing in the Shadow DN11 marked
a low key start to what was a diverse and varied F1 career in which he failed quite to realise his potential. After
just two races wrestling with the DN11 at Buenos Aires and Interlagos, Stefan took what quickly became clear as
the most shrewd decision of all, namely to pass up on any opportunity of driving the car on a third GP outing.
Instead, he decided to gamble on a step backwards into F3 driving a Marlboro-backed March 803 for a character
by the name of Ron Dennis. Seven months after struggling around Buenos Aires in the recalcitrant Shadow he
was celebrating victory in the British F3 championship which gave his career a timely boost which the Shadow
never could.
“When I first got behind the wheel of the Shadow, you’ve got to realise that I’d never previously driven anything
remotely that powerful before,” said Stefan reflectively some 30 years later. “There was no time to do any prerace testing and Bert Baldwin, the team manager who had previously been a Goodyear race tyre engineer, just
told me to keep it away from the barriers. I was completely at sea, really, and about six seconds a lap off the pace
at the end of my first free practice session.” Stefan failed to qualify.
Things went little better a fortnight later at Interlagos. “It was just a question of hanging on to the steering wheel
on this very bumpy circuit which was unusual inasmuch as it ran anti-clockwise. It was one hell of a strain on my
neck muscles. It felt as though I was about to rip my head off.” He also commented wryly; “The car was
supposed to have revised suspension geometry for the Brazilian race but all I can remember was that it felt as
though the steering was seizing up momentarily every lap as I went through the fast left-hander after the pits.
And we discovered that the wheelbase was an inch and a half longer on one side than the other.” It was not the
machinery of which world championships were made.
Johansson subsequently drove in F1 for Spirit (1983), Tyrrell and Toleman (1984), Ferrari (1985 and 1986),
McLaren (1987), Ligier (1988), Onyx (1989) and AGS (1991) contesting a total of 79 Grands Prix. Yet the two
he failed to start for Shadow still stick in his mind.
DAVID KENNEDY
David Kennedy was born in Sligo, Ireland, on 15 January 1953, and made a mark by quickly winning the Irish
Formula Ford championship. But he quickly learned the truism that if you want to make a small fortune then start
with a big one and go motor racing. After a couple of seasons he was almost broke and went off to Australia to
work in the mines with fellow racer Derek Daly. David made enough from this venture to pay off all his debts
and on his return relocated to the UK at about the time that he met a guy called Eddie Jordan, who was working
as a bank teller, and got him involved in motor sport as well.
“I then won two British Formula Ford championships, and that was huge stuff, and I was second in the European
championship,” he recalled. “Then I did Formula 3 for two years against Prost and Piquet, and wondered why I
didn't win the championships! Little did I know I was racing against guys who would win seven World Championships. But I was able to beat them, and put them away ­ so I am pleased with that, in retrospect.”
O LD R ACING C ARS . COM
P AGE 5
D AVID K ENNEDY ( CONT )
He continued: “Then I got the funds together to race in the British Formula 1 series, and this then took me to
Australia where I raced in the F1/F5000 series, which I won as well, out here in Surfers Paradise. I finished
second in the British F1 series ­ therefore I was the best young, European driver around. I got my way then into
Formula One ­ unfortunately I didn't realise I was coming into a team which was on its way out. And that was
Shadow!”
SHADOW HISTORY
The driving force behind the Shadow team was former military intelligence agent Don Nichols who was originally
based at Ford Ord, the huge military base on the Monterey peninsular in California which was operational from
1917 to as recent as 1994. After the Second World War, Nichols was one of many intelligence agents who was
based in Japan during that country’s period of reconstruction and he eventually prospered from setting up an
import/export business in the country from which he returned to the USA in the mid-1960s.
Nichols admittedly cut a rather mysterious figure and there were, perhaps inevitably, suggestions that he worked
with the Central Intelligence Agency during his time in Japan. Certainly he had some motoring links during that
period, selling Firestone and Goodyear tyres as well as reputedly advising on the designs of some Japanese race
circuits.
On his return from the Far East, Nichols established Advanced Vehicle Systems Inc in California and commissioned designer Trevor Harris to design him a Can Am sports car . Meanwhile, in 1970 BRM F1 driver Jackie
Oliver met up with Nichols when the Englishman was in the USA driving the promising Peter Bryant-designed
Autocoast in the Can-Am sports car series. Then in 1971, Bryant moved to work with Nichols at Shadow on a
new Can-Am project which was based round a tiny little machine, ultra-low in profile and running on 12-inch
wheels. Somebody once described it as like a tea tray with a Chevy V8 engine strapped to the back. Nichols
asked Oliver if he was interested in driving it, but Oliver told him there was no chance, adding that if he wanted
to be serious about his racing he’d better get a decent designer.
It was not until 1972 that Shadow produced a more conventionally competitive Can-Am machine and Jackie
Oliver duly drove it to eighth place in the North American series. But by now Nichols was tempted by the
prospect of establishing an all-American F1 team following in the footsteps of Dan Gurney’s Eagle operation.
Oliver persuaded him to sign up the British engineer Tony Southgate as design chief for this project , having
worked with him at BRM where he had designed the impressive P153 which Jackie and Pedro Rodriguez had
driven in the 1970 F1 world championship.
Oliver was partnered by American George Follmer for the 1973 season and the team established a base at
Weedon, close to Northampton, where the Cosworth-powered Shadow DN1s were built. They also sold a
customer car to Graham Hill’s Embassy Hill Racing Team for which the veteran twice world champion was
driving that year. Follmer finished sixth to score a point on his F1 debut in the South African GP at Kyalami then
followed that up with third at Barcelona’s Montjuich Park circuit behind Emerson Fittipaldi’s JPS Lotus 72 and
the Tyrrell-Ford of Francois Cevert.
Oliver finished third in the rain-soaked Canadian Grand Prix at Mosport Park, but there were those, including the
P AGE 6
S HADOW DN11-01
S HADOW IN F ORMULA 1
author whose personal race lap chart was one of many submitted to the chaotic and confused organisers who
seemed to have lost control of all their race scoring efforts, who believe to this day that Jackie might in fact have
been the winner rather than McLaren’s Peter Revson. Ironically, Revson would be recruited to drive for Shadow
in 1974 alongside French rising star Jean-Pierre Jarier, only to be killed when his DN3 crashed during testing at
Kyalami following a pre-impact front suspension failure.
Although Oliver had hung up his helmet as far as F1 was concerned at the end of 1973, he continued racing the
Shadow DN2 in Can-Am through that season and into 1974 with George Follmer as his team-mate. In 1974
Oliver and Follmer finished first and second in the Can-Am championship with Oliver scoring four wins in five
races, but the series was moribund by this stage in its history and died out by the end of the year.
The team now felt it had to find another bright young talent who would mesh comfortably with the dynamic and
thrusting Jarier. The team experimented firstly with Brian Redman in the Spanish and Belgian races, then with the
promising young Swedish driver Bertil Roos for his home race at Anderstorp. But eventually their choice fell on
the young Welshman Tom Pryce who had won the Monaco F3 supporting race so impressively in a March earlier
in the season.
For the 1975 season Southgate designed the DN5, probably the best of his efforts for the Shadow squad, and Jarier
led the Brazilian GP commandingly before an almost certain victory was snatched away by a fuel metering unit
problem. Pryce used the DN5 to win the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch and also qualified on pole for the
British GP at Silverstone and later took third in the ‘half points’ Austrian GP which was won by Vittorio
Brambilla’s March after the race was flagged to a halt prematurely due to torrential rain. The team briefly flirted
with the use of a French Matra V12 engine towards the end of the year and Jarier drove the specially built Shadow
DN7 in the Austrian and Italian races, but they did not proceed with the partnership. Meanwhile, on the other
side of the Atlantic Oliver was still racing in F5000 with a Shadow DN6 through to the end of the 1975 season ,after which the team was closed down.
At the end of 1975, Shadow suffered a major blow when their sponsors Universal Oil Products decided to
withdraw its backing. Strapped for cash, the team could only fall back on updating the existing DN5 design and it
was not until the Dutch GP at Zandvoort that Pryce debuted the new DN8, qualifying third and finishing fourth.
Later in the year Pryce ran as high as second in the inaugural Japanese GP at Mount Fuji but retired with
overheating caused by a built-up of rubber debris in the radiator intakes.
The 1976 season was generally a disappointment and Oliver worked hard to put together relatively modest
sponsorship deals, but far more serious was the loss of Tony Southgate to Lotus where he would help with the
development of Colin Chapman’s ground effect technology. The Swiss cigar maker Villiger was recruited as a
sponsor for 1977 and wealthy Italian entrepreneur Franco Ambrosio providing funds for his compatriot Renzo
Zorzi to drive the second car.
Shadow would then be at the centre of the most bizarre and tragic of F1 disasters in the 1977 South African GP.
Just three years after Revson’s death at the track near Johannesburg, Pryce was climbing through the field after a
O LD R ACING C ARS . COM
P AGE 7
S HADOW IN F ORMULA 1
poor start in the DN8 when he collided with a fire marshal who was running across the track, ironically to deal
with an electrical fire on Zorzi’s machine which had rolled to a standstill opposite the pits. Tom was struck in the
face by the marshal’s fire extinguisher and died instantly, but his foot remained jammed on the throttle all the way
down to Crowthorne corner where, after a collision with Jacques Laffite’s Ligier, he careered through the catch
fencing to an eventual halt, one of the catch fencing poles flying in a cloud of dust between myself and fellow
journalist Jeff Hutchinson who were lap charting the race from atop the trackside banking.
Zorzi was replaced for Monaco by the 22-year old Riccardo Patrese, one of the sport’s brightest rising stars of the
moment, but it was the recruitment of the tough Australian driver Alan Jones which paved the way for Shadow’s
greatest achievement. In patchy damp conditions during that year’s Austrian GP, Jones was running second in the
Shadow DN8 only for the engine of James Hunt’s leading McLaren M26 to fail and Jones inherited the win.
By this stage in the Shadow story, Oliver and team manager Alan Rees decided to go it alone for 1978, walking
out together with Southgate who had returned from his brief sojourn with Lotus. Unfortunately Southgate,
believing his status to be that of a freelance designer at Shadow, took with him the designs of their new 1978 car.
Although the Arrows FA1 rolled out onto the circuit before the identical Shadow DN9, Don Nichols immediately
initiated a legal action against his three former employees which resulted in an acutely embarrassing hearing in
London’s High Court when many motor racing insiders – including the author – found themselves giving
evidence on the matter. Nichols and Shadow won the case, but Arrows had correctly anticipated that this would
indeed be the outcome and had started developing the new Arrows A1 as an insurance policy to enable them to
keep racing for the balance of the season.
The Shadow DN9s were driven in 1978 by Hans Stuck and Clay Regazzoni, but only managed to record a series of
minor placings over the balance of the season. There was no money to build new cars for 1979 and the DN9s
were re-worked by Richard Owen and John Gentry while the driving duties were entrusted to pay-drivers Jan
Lammers and Elio de Angelis. Gentry began work on the DN11 design towards the end of the year, but he then
left the team and the car was completed by Owen and Vic Morris.
As we have seen in this dossier, the DN11s were not competitive and, although a DN12 had been designed and
built by Morris and Chuck Graeminger, Nichols decided to close the team after six races that saw just a single race
start. He sold the assets of the Shadow organisation to Teddy Yip.
S PECIFICATION : S HADOW DN11
Wheelbase: 109 in (2769 mm)
Track: 64 in front /67 in rear (1626 mm/1702 mm)
Chassis weight: 100 lb (45 kg)
Weight: 1350 lb (613 kg)
Wheels: 13 in front and rear (330 mm)
Engine: Ford Cosworth DFV
Gearbox: Hewland DG300
P AGE 8
S HADOW DN11-01
SHADOW DN11
Technically the Shadow DN11 was an unremarkable machine from a technical standpoint, which was something
of a shame for the team which was effectively convulsed in its death throes at a time when F1 technology was
accelerating at an extremely fast race. Any team with decent financial and technical resources during 1978 and
1979 would have been scratching to keep pace with the front runners during a period when Lotus set the
performance benchmark with its ground effect type 79 which carried Mario Andretti to the 1978 world championship, followed by the technical refinement of the undercar aerodynamic theme which raised performance
standards the following year in the form of the Patrick Head-designed Williams FW07.
Cash-strapped and making do, the Shadow DN11 was most definitely what Denis Jenkinson described judgementally as “just another British standard kit car”. It had a Cosworth DFV V8 engine fitted as a stressed member, a
central fuel cell and a Hewland six-speed gearbox. The biggest challenge facing an F1 engineer during this period
was ‘sealing’ the side pods, in other words ensuring that the sliding skirts which ran front-to-rear along the lower
edge of each pod remained in firm contact with the track surface. This was one of the biggest problems with the
Shadow DN11 allied to the fact that its novice drivers were simply hanging on for dear life behind the wheel for
the most part and had very limited technical know-how to draw on in order to get the best out of the car.
SHADOW DN11-01
There is some debate over the precise role of Shadow DN11-01 which was one of three such chassis loaded up on
the FOCA charter for the first two races of the 1980 season: the Argentine GP at Buenos Aires and the Brazilian
GP at Interlagos. The chassis ‘log book’ published in Autocourse annual at the end of 1980 shows chassis number
1 to have been the spare car in Argentina and then the designated race chassis for the US GP West at Long Beach
when Geoff Lees drove it in practice but failed to qualify.
I actually reported on all these early season ‘fly away’ races outside Europe in my role as Grand Prix correspondent for Motoring News and Jenks’s stand-in for Motor Sport and the two of us put our heads together with
Autocourse editor Maurice Hamilton during the course of the season to verify and collate all the chassis numbers
of competing cars that season. With that in mind – and bearing in mind that the starting point for the Shadow
DN11 who-did-what started with my own race notebooks for these events – I am quite satisfied that DN11-01
was the spare car and never made it through to the start of a Grand Prix.
After the assets of the Shadow team were sold to Teddy Yip, all three DN11s remained in Don Nichols’ ownership and DN11-01 was still at his base in Salinas, California, when it was visited by Allen Brown in 1994. In
1995, it was bought from Nichols by Shadow enthusiast Pete Racely who prepared it for vintage racing and raced
it at Sears Point in 1996. He also raced it at the Monterey Historic Automobile Races and the LA Grand Prix in
1997 and the Wine Country Classic in 1998 before selling it to Peter Stoneberg later that year. Stoneberg drove
it at the Monterey Historics in 1999.
Stoneberg later sold it to Tatsuyuki Sakakibara in Tokyo, Japan and it remained in Japan until Patrick van Schoote
of Symbolic Motor Car Company (La Jolla, CA) bought it from Sakakibara in 2007. He sold the car to Miles
Jackson the following year who still owns it.
O LD R ACING C ARS . COM
P AGE 9
S HADOW DN11-01 TODAY
Miles Jackson racing the fully restored Shadow DN11-01.
P AGE 10
S HADOW DN11-01
S TATEMENT OF AUTHENTICITY
A LLEN B ROWN
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec sodales pellentesque magna, in porta augue lacinia
quis. Mauris aliquet tempus dignissim. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per
inceptos himenaeos. Vivamus euismod, leo a placerat accumsan, eros ligula pellentesque magna, non mollis quam
enim id est. Curabitur sed nibh non quam scelerisque venenatis sit amet sit amet felis. Nulla luctus nisi sit amet
nisi convallis pretium. Donec pretium, nisl et convallis euismod, neque est vestibulum tortor, vel tempor nibh
nulla id risus. Donec vitae nisi non erat aliquam adipiscing ac non mi. Curabitur magna odio, vulputate consectetur rhoncus a, commodo id felis. Praesent fringilla magna in dui accumsan sed vulputate nisl vehicula. Nullam
sem purus, ultricies sed venenatis a, interdum eget lacus. Phasellus a dui id ligula faucibus tincidunt sit amet sed
velit. Mauris mollis odio in augue molestie id tempor augue malesuada. Pellentesque rutrum interdum orci, quis
imperdiet urna sagittis rhoncus. Mauris molestie molestie euismod. Cras ultricies augue non enim venenatis non
molestie libero dictum. Duis felis felis, molestie nec vestibulum non, sodales quis enim. Sed nisi lacus, accumsan
in commodo in, rhoncus ac velit. Curabitur feugiat, justo eu iaculis rhoncus, sapien mi mollis tortor, et varius mi
lectus at velit. Sed varius, mauris ut aliquam eleifend, sem neque feugiat est, at scelerisque neque tellus ac dolor.
O WNERS
1.
Nichols Advanced Vehicles Systems, Inc (1980-1997)
2.
Pete Racely (West Palm Beach, FL) 1994-1998
3.
Peter Stoneberg (Tiburon, CA) 1998 - ?
4.
Tatsuyuki Sakakibara (Tokyo, Japan) ? - 2007
5.
Patrick van Schoote/Symbolic Motor Car Company (La Jolla, CA) 2007-2008
6.
Miles Jackson (Maple Valley, WA) 2008 to date
S OURCES
1.
Don Nichols (conversation with Allen Brown, August 1994)
2.
Miles Jackson (correspondence with Allen Brown 2009-2010)
3.
Pete Racely (email to Allen Brown, June 2010)
4.
Patrick van Schoote (email to Allen Brown, June 2010)
5.
Stefan Johansson (conversation with Alan Henry, June 2010)
6.
David Kennedy (conversation with Alan Henry, June 2010)
Legal disclaimer: The information in this document is
based on the sources shown and no guarantee is made of
its accuracy. This information should not be used as the
basis of any financial valuation of this car or relied upon in
any transaction.
Allen Brown
7 Fennel Close
Farnborough
Hampshire
GU14 9XD
ENGLAND
phone: +44 1252 524302
fax: +44 870 131 5092
email: [email protected]