Derek Bell MBE

26 times entrant, 5 times winner (1975, 1981, 1982, 1986, 1987)

During a career spanning over three decades, Derek Bell has competed all over the world in many types of race cars. His international racing career started in 1965 with just 3 Formula 3 races. Regular wins through 1966 and 67 catapulted him through to F2 and into a works Ferrari Grand Prix drive in 1968. Derek’s Formula One career spanned 7 years and just 9 Grand Prix for 5 different teams

Derek however is better known for his exploits in sports cars. Winning Le Mans a total of five times (1975, 81-82, 86-87) in a variety of incredible race cars, he spent 15 years of his career racing Porsches. Derek was also a twice World Sports car champion (1985-86) and awarded an MBE for services to motor racing in 1986. All that has eluded him is the sixth win at Le Mans, which would make him the most successful driver in the event. As recently as 1995 his McLaren F1 GTR seemed assured of victory when transmission problems relegated the car to third position in the final hours of the race. Derek continues to race saloon cars with great success in the US and makes the occasional magical appearance in the UK, racing historic Formula One cars and others, invariably towards the front of the field.

Off the racetrack, Derek covered all the Grands Prix for Fox Sports Network, as well as frequently appearing as a commentator for British television. In the past Derek has worked on numerous films, once spending six weeks with Steve McQueen filming the 70’s classic Grand Prix.

His career started with some early racing in 1964 and a debut win in a Lotus 7 at Goodwood in a low formulae. A graduation to Formula 3 the following year soon saw him take his first victory in a Lotus 41, again at Goodwood in 1966. Taking seven F3 victories in 1967, Derek graduated to Formula 2 the following year, where he showed enough promise in a privately run Brabham BT23 to catch the eye of Enzo Ferrari. Ferrari decided to take on the promising young Englishman and put him in his works F2 team, where Bell found himself in the middle of a huge pile up in his debut for the Italian marque. He then looked set to win at Zandvoort until his gearbox broke but the boss was pleased with his new protégée never the less!

The Italian supreme decided Derek was ready to make his Formula One debut at the Italian Grand Prix in 1968 in a Ferrari 312 and race again that year in the US GP. He did incredibly well to qualify eighth for his debut race, just half a second shy of his team leaders, but the car lasted just four laps in the race. When it came to the US, Derek hadn’t seen the track before and struggled heavily to keep up with the pace, qualifying three seconds slower than his team mate and retiring from the race with a blown engine.

All in all Derek’s Grand Prix record has a somewhat ragged and topsy-turvy look to it - subbing here, doing a part-season there and skipping another. In between, he was busy perfecting the art of sport car driving. Derek Bell must surely be one of the best sports car drivers of the seventies and perhaps even the best of the eighties, by then putting his wealth of experience to extremely good use. Sports cars became the focal point of his career, and the one that he prefers to remember most!

Aside from finishing a creditable runner up to Clay Regazzoni in the European F2 title, Bell’s Sports car career took off in 1970 with a fiery baptism! Invited by Ecurie Francorchamps boss Jacques Swaters to drive the Belgian's Ferrari 512 at the Spa 1000kms, he became involved in a horrendous pit lane fire, but this did not scare him off replacing Brian Redman in the crack John Wyer Porsche, helping to deliver another sports car title to the marque. As team mate to Jo Siffert, the pair got off on the right foot by taking the opening race at Buenos Aires, before taking third at Brands Hatch and second at Monza and Spa. At the final event at Watkins Glen, Bell was joined by the departing Richard Attwood. The pairing took third place behind the Alfa of Peterson and De Adamich, and Siffert’s Porsche.

In 1971 Bell joined Richard Attwood as team mates for the season, giving Attwood the chance to hand the mantle of Britain’s top sports car driver to bell before his retirement at the end of the year.

Bell stuck with the Gulf super team while his few Grand Prix outings brought him nothing but misery, although in 1972, now equipped with the new powerful Mirage-Cosworth engine, his Gulf team was thoroughly eclipsed by the works Ferraris.

In 1973, Bell formed a new driver combination with Mike Hailwood, having secured the team's best 1972 result with third at the season-closer at Watkins Glen. This proved to be another tough year for the Gulf team, with most of the spoils shared by Ferrari, Matra-Simca and, on occasion, Porsche. Bell and Hailwood did however manage to take the Spa 1000kms, the Mirage squad even taking the double with the sister car of Schuppan and Ganley in second. The following year saw Bell and the Mirage team edging closer to the faster Matras, which now faced its stiffest competition from Alfa Romeo, Ferrari having left the sports car series to successfully concentrate on Formula One. Initially paired with Hailwood, Derek took second at Spa, before joining Ferrari refugee Ickx to take third at Paul Ricard. For the final two races of the season, Bell joined up with David Hobbs to take two third places at Brands and Kyalami.

With his GP career over in 1975 Derek really started to excel as a sports car driver, taking the Gulf Mirage GR8 to his first of five Le Mans wins, while he formed a formidable pairing with Pescarolo in Alfa Romeo's successful assault on the World Championship of Makes, taking their T33 to three big wins at Spa (one of Derek's favourite tracks), the Österreichring and Watkins Glen - another track at which Bell always seemed to excel.

For 1976, Alfa Romeo and Alpine-Renault withdrew from the sports car championship, so Derek made a surprise switch to big Group 2 touring cars, signing for Ralph Broad's Broadspeed Jaguar squad. After an inauspicious end-of-season debut, a full two-car European Touring Car Championship attack was launched to beat the almighty BMW 3.0 CSLs, Derek sharing with touring car ace Andy Rouse. Unfortunately, Broad's team got off on the wrong foot in the first place, being forced to use the stubby XJ12 body as their racing platform instead of the sleek new XJS, which wasn't suitable for homologation - courtesy of Jaguar management's hair-brained understanding of motor sports. Broadspeed did all it could to turn the XJ12 into a winning machine - it sure looked forceful and produced a great sound - but its reliability was dreadful compared to the Alpinas, which routinely lasted to the finish while the Jags were left pondering their string of DNFs. At the end of the season the Broadspeed challenge was unsurprisingly withdrawn.

The experience left Bell travelling the world for drives in a great variety of championships, Derek even taking up single-seaters again as he made forays into F5000 and Formula Atlantic.

Following the decline of the struggling World Championship of Makes, by then the playground for minor constructors such as Rondeau, Chevron and a host of privateer Porsches, the series was revitalised into the new World Endurance Championship, attracting the finest sports car manufacturers in the world. It spelled a return to top sports car form for Bell, who grabbed the opportunity to sign for the works Rothmans Porsche squad, initially joining up with Jacky Ickx, Vern Schuppan and Stefan Bellof. He then formed a successful pairing with Hans Stuck, the two taking the newly formed sports car driver's championship (in effect since 1981) in both 1985 and 1986. That last important title got him an MBE!

It took him six more years to grab his second win at Le Mans in 1981, again with Ickx, now driving the open-top 936, the original Alpine beater in its final year of service before handing over its duties to the all-new Rothmans Porsche 956 in 1982. In its first season, Bell and Ickx again won Le Mans and claimed second in 1983. He took his fourth Le Mans victory in his 1986 glory year, now in the 962C derivative, along with Stuck and Al Holbert. His final triumph at Le Mans came in 1987, sharing with the same guys and 1988 brought a runner-up spot to Big Cat drivers Lammers, Wallace and Dumfries. The Porsche hegemony were then forced into surrender by onslaughts from Jaguar, Sauber-Mercedes, the surprise Mazda rotary car and finally Peugeot before the Group C era came to a close.

                                                                        

Following a disappointing Le Mans in 1994 where Bell only managed sixth in another 962 spin-off, the Kremer K8, Derek announced that this had been his last Le Mans. Yet the following year he returned in a Harrods McLaren F1-GTR, co-driven by his elder son Justin and Andy Wallace. They finished a splendid third, and suddenly all the talk of retirement had disappeared. In 1996, Olivier Grouillard took the place of Justin Bell and the trio romped to sixth after a gruelling 24 hours.

And that was finally it. Derek would retire from sports car racing and leave his diaries to be a fascinating read. The Briton may not have topped the table as a Formula 1 driver, but as a sports car supreme, he will always be regarded as one of the best drivers ever.

 

 

 

 

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