The Brazilian star looks back on two championship-winning careers, in Formula 1 and CART racing
By Simon Taylor
The Hamilton phenomenon has rewritten the Formula 1 record books. But
Lewis’s meteoric progress doesn’t diminish the achievements, 37 years
ago, of a Brazilian tyro called Emerson Fittipaldi. Emerson was already
22 when he arrived in a cold, unwelcoming England in February 1969. Two
months later he had his first Formula Ford race, and 15 months after
that he was in F1 with Lotus.
Hamilton won his sixth Grand Prix, but Fittipaldi won his fourth –
restoring morale to a team reeling from the tragic death of its No1
driver. In his second full F1 season he became the then youngest-ever
World Champion. A year later he switched to McLaren, and became World
Champion again, scoring McLaren’s first drivers’ and constructors’
titles. Then, at 29, he turned his back on the easier challenge of
driving for a top team to run his own Brazilian F1 operation.
It was a failure, and he retired disillusioned and demoralised,
saying he never wanted to race again. But at the ripe old age of 37 he
was persuaded to get back in the cockpit and try CART in the USA. His
glittering second career lasted 12 seasons. He won the Indy 500 twice,
and was crowned CART Champion in 1989.
Emerson is 61 now, a grandfather who has just become a father again,
and is working harder than ever. Finding a lunch date in either of his
home towns of São Paulo or Miami proves difficult, but eventually we
manage to coincide in a hotel restaurant near Amsterdam. Slim, spare and
bright-eyed, he is bouncing with energy and good humour despite two
consecutive nights of long-distance flights. He’s flown to Holland to
cheer on the Brazilian team in the opening round of the A1 GP series at
Zandvoort, but he left São Paulo two days earlier for Detroit, where he
had a high-level meeting with General Motors. GM is striving to develop
greener cars, and one of the Fittipaldi businesses is producing ethanol
from sugar cane. In Brazil, four million of the nation’s cars run on
ethanol, and Emerson sees a great future for it on a worldwide basis.
He’s a New Age man in other ways, too. He lives on a strict
macrobiotic diet, and before his abstemious meal of swordfish and salad
he orders a cup of very hot water, gets a small tin out of his pocket,
spoons an enigmatic brown substance into the cup, and drinks it. It’s
concentrated Japanese miso, made from fermented soya bean, and Emerson
likes to have several cups a day. Wherever he is in the world he has a
daily session in a gym, and he seems indecently young and healthy for a
man in his seventh decade – let alone a man whose spine is held together
with titanium rods and screws.
Emerson’s grandfather emigrated to Brazil from southern Italy, and
his Russian mother fled to Brazil in the 1930s. His father, Wilson,
raced motorbikes and was a journalist and commentator – Brazil’s Murray
Walker. When Chico Landi, the only Brazilian F1 driver of any standing
before Emerson, won the Bari GP in a 2-litre Ferrari in 1948, Wilson was
there to describe the race to his radio audience at home. He was still
commentating on Formula 1 when both his sons, Wilson Jr and Emerson,
were racing in the 1970s.
The brothers grew up surrounded by motor sport, and Emerson, younger
than Wilson by three years, was racing motorbikes in his teens. You had
to be 17 to race karts then, but Emerson helped build and prepare his
brother’s kart, and that of a friend called Carlos Pace. As soon as he
was 17 Emerson started winning kart races, and sales of the machines he
built, called Minikarts, helped finance his racing. Then he moved into
Formula Vee with a self-built car, winning the Brazilian FV championship
and selling 28 customer replicas. There was a Porsche-engined
Karmann-Ghia VW coupé and, later, a remarkable twin-engined VW Beetle,
whose glassfibre silhouette hid two 1600cc flat-four engines in tandem
behind the driver. With 350 horsepower in a car weighing 550kg it was
devastatingly quick, and in Emerson’s hands this unlikely beast outpaced
the wealthy local racers in their GT40s and Lola T70s at Jacarepagua.
When Emerson arrived in England in 1969 he could speak almost no
English. Like so many young drivers from abroad, he learned the words
for gear ratio and camber angle before he learned the words for bacon
and eggs. He bought a Merlyn Formula Ford: “I had enough money to buy it
and get to the races, but no money to mend it if I crashed.” He towed
it behind an old Land Rover, and lodged with a family in Wimbledon for
£7 a week – “Mr and Mrs Bates, they were very kind to me. I was always
lucky in meeting people that could help me, like Denis Rowland; he had
very good engines and knew the right set-up for the car. Then Jim
Russell and Mike Warner, Peter Warr, and then Colin Chapman. Everything
happened in a few months.”
The right people wanted to meet the Brazilian newcomer because, like
Ayrton Senna da Silva a dozen years later, he was winning everything.
His first race was actually at Zandvoort: he put the Merlyn on pole and
led until his engine blew. Rowland gave him the parts to rebuild it.
They took the finished car to bleak, windy Snetterton for a test, and
the gearbox broke. “I cried that day. I thought I would go back to the
sunshine in Brazil and forget about Europe.” Rowland persuaded him to
persevere, and he returned to Snetterton for his second race – and won.
More FF wins followed, but in July Jim Russell, who’d been watching his
progress, did a deal with Mike Warner of Lotus Components, and the
Merlyn was exchanged for a Lotus 59 F3 car. Emerson was fifth in his
first F3 race, second in his second, and won his third. He won seven
more in the next three months and, on the strength of half a season,
took the British F3 Championship.
The first F1 offer had already emerged. “By September I was living in
Norwich. Frank Williams, who was having flying lessons, flew up with
his instructor to see me. He said, ‘Next year I will have two De Tomasos
in Formula 1, and you can be No2 to Piers Courage.’ I said, ‘Thank you,
Frank. It is an honour, this invitation, but I am not ready.’ Then
later in the year Colin Chapman called me into his office. My legs were
shaking, I was thinking of Jim Clark and Graham Hill, all that history.
It was a very emotional day for me. He said, ‘I want you to drive for me
next year in Formula 1.’ I told Colin I needed more experience. I
wanted to start in F2 and see how things went.
“F2 was so good in those days, because you raced against all the F1
drivers with equal cars and engines. So I did six or seven F2 races in
the first half of 1970, and I got to know Jochen Rindt. He was the king
of F2 then, and I ran close with him sometimes. Then Colin said, ‘We
want to put you in the Lotus 49 for the British Grand Prix, a No3
entry.’ I sat in the car for the first time in a test at Silverstone.
Colin flew there from Hethel in his Navajo, with me sitting in the back.
I’d never flown in a private plane before. Jochen was there testing the
72, but Colin sent him out in the 49 for a few laps to see if it was
OK, and then I jumped in. I did five or six laps, came in and said, ‘The
car is understeering a lot.’ ‘The car’s fine’, says Jochen. ‘Don’t
change anything. Just use more power and the understeer will go away!’
But they put on more front wing for me, and I started to set good times.
Jochen was pleased – sometimes a driver doesn’t like to see another
driver going well, but he was happy about it. He even hung out the pit
signals for me himself.”
At Zandvoort a few days later Piers Courage was killed. Again Frank
Williams offered Emerson the De Tomaso drive, but then Chapman
responded with a proper contract. The record books show Emerson’s Brands
Hatch F1 debut resulted in a steady drive to eighth, but in fact he
lost fourth gear and had a broken exhaust. Before that, his fastest lap
was only 0.9sec off winner Rindt’s best in the 72: Chapman must have
been well pleased with his young No3. Two weeks later came his first
points, a fine fourth at Hockenheim. Then in Austria he drove the 49 for
the last time, slowed by mixture problems.
Team Lotus arrived at Monza with three 72s for Rindt, John Miles and
Emerson, including a brand new 72 chassis for Rindt. In Friday practice
Emerson was sent out to shake it down. “Colin said at Monza we must run
with no wings on the car. I was taking it easy, bedding it in, and I saw
Jack Brabham coming up in my mirrors. I didn’t want to get in his way.
Then when I look back at the road I am 100m past my braking point for
Parabolica. I lock the front wheels, and I hit the back of Giunti’s
Ferrari, fly over it and finish up in the trees, with the car standing
on its nose. I had to stand on the pedals to get out. Colin was
extremely pissed off, it was a brand new car. On the Saturday morning I
had breakfast with Jochen, and he asked me to replace him in the F2
team, because he wanted to stop F2. We shook hands on that. A few hours
later he was dead.”
Jochen Rindt, the World Champion elect, was killed when his Lotus 72
veered left under braking for the Parabolica, almost certainly because
one of the shafts to its inboard front brakes sheared. The car nosed
underneath the poorly located barrier and hit one of the retaining
posts, and was dreadfully damaged. It was a crushing blow for the Lotus
team, which withdrew at once from the weekend. No2 driver John Miles
believed running the 72s without wings at Monza to maximise their
straight-line speed made them unstable, and he had a ferocious argument
with Colin Chapman in the pits just before the Rindt accident. He left
the team immediately.
“It was an awful time, for me, and for everybody. Piers and Bruce
[McLaren] had been killed that summer, and now Jochen. In those days the
cars were very weak in an accident. Everyone in the team was so sad.
Colin rang me and said he was withdrawing from the next Grand Prix also;
that was Canada, two weeks after Monza. He said, ‘Emerson, I don’t know
what I’m going to do. I’ll let you know.’
“Then a week later he called me, and he said, ‘I want you to be No1
driver for Lotus. We’re going to Watkins Glen.’ I was amazed. I thought
he would be getting someone more experienced. I had only done four
Grands Prix, and had one crash! Coming out of the tragedy, the ambience
in the whole team was very difficult. Jacky Ickx still had a chance of
winning the title for Ferrari if he won the last two races, and Colin
said I must beat him because it had to be Jochen’s championship. There
was big pressure on me.
“Ickx qualified on pole. I was third behind Jackie Stewart. The night
before the race I was very sick. I had a high temperature, sweating,
cold. Colin came into my room and said, ‘Can you drive tomorrow?’ I
said, ‘I don’t know, depends how I wake up.’ I woke up dizzy and went to
the track, and then it was time for the warm-up, and I got in the car
and the adrenalin started to work. After the warm-up I said to Colin, ‘I
feel great.’”
Emerson made history that day: he won the United States GP, ensured
that Jochen Rindt was posthumous World Champion and clinched the
constructors’ championship for Lotus. He is the first to admit it was a
lucky victory: late leader Pedro Rodriguez ran low on fuel in the
closing stages. But that victory, and new recruit Reine Wisell’s third
place in the other 72, did much to restore Lotus morale.
“I couldn’t believe it when the pit signals said P1. When I came to
the finish flag I saw Colin run into the road and throw his hat in the
air. When I was a kid in Brazil I used to see pictures in magazines of
Colin doing that for Jim Clark. Now he was doing it for me.
“Next thing was, Enzo Ferrari called me. He offered double what Colin
was paying me, but he wanted me to drive sports cars as well. It was
difficult to say no to Enzo Ferrari, but I wanted to concentrate just on
Formula 1. I stayed with Colin for three more years.”
In 1971 Lotus failed to win a Grand Prix for the first time since
1959, partly because the 56B turbine car deflected a lot of Chapman’s
attention. Emerson raced it four times, in three non-championship races
and at the Italian GP, where, because of legal proceedings following
Rindt’s death, it was entered by World Wide Racing. Despite two cracked
brake discs he brought the unwieldy car home eighth. The other problem
was that the new slick tyres were showing up handling problems with the
72. “The ’71 season was the first year for slicks, and they had much
more grip. The 72 was too flexible, and on the high-grip tracks we were
in trouble. On low-grip tracks like Monaco it wasn’t so bad. I did the
whole race there with no clutch and finished fifth.”
In June he and his first wife Maria Helena were badly hurt in a road
accident and, having missed Zandvoort, he was still heavily bandaged
when he came through to third in the French GP. He repeated the result
at Silverstone two weeks later, and was second in Austria. But it was
not a happy season.
“Colin didn’t believe us when we said the cars weren’t handling. But
for the non-championship race at Brands Hatch at the end of the year,
the one when Jo Siffert died, we had reinforced suspension, a whole new
package. The car felt so different. Now we were looking good for 1972.”
With the red and gold colours of Gold Leaf replaced by the black and
gold of John Player Special, it was an amazing year. In 12 championship
rounds Emerson hit reliability problems in four, but in the other eight
he had five wins, two seconds and a third, to be crowned World Champion
at 25 years old. The way Colin and Emerson worked together recalled his
relationship with Jim Clark a decade earlier. “One evening we were
having dinner, talking, and suddenly Colin said, ‘I don’t want to get
closer to you, Emerson. Friendship is dangerous for me, because of what
happened to me with Jimmy and with Jochen.’
“I always say Colin was a genius. I never worked with anybody who had
so much intuition about how a race car is working. He was the best
school a driver could have. Sometimes if my car wasn’t working right we
went for dinner, I told Colin exactly what it was doing, he’d go back to
the garage to think about it, and the next day it was better. His
solutions to problems always came so quick. And he always wanted to win.
He was absolutely committed to winning.”
Emerson’s team-mates – Reine Wisell, Dave Walker – were clearly No2s,
but the arrival in 1973 of Ronnie Peterson meant that Lotus had two
winners on the team. Between them they won nine races and Lotus romped
home constructors’ champions. But the drivers’ title went to Jackie
Stewart, with Emerson second and Ronnie third. Journalists looked for
friction between them, but found none.
“Ronnie was my best friend in Formula 1. I had been close to him ever
since Formula 2 in 1970. I stayed with him in his house in England, he
stayed with me in Switzerland. We had a strong working relationship.”
This was tested by what happened at Monza that year, with the
championship in the balance. “Colin, Ronnie and I talk about it before
the race, and decide we will not race against each other. But near the
end, if Ronnie is leading and I am second, Colin will give a signal to
tell Ronnie I can come past. So in the race we are an easy one-two and I
am waiting for the signal from Colin, and it never comes. I am going
crazy, because I still have a chance in the championship. So I start
chasing Ronnie, and Ronnie starts racing too. You can’t blame him for
that, because there was no signal. At the line he beat me by 0.8sec.
After, I went to Colin, very disappointed, and he said, ‘Well, I decided
not to give the signal.’
“So next day, Monday, I began to talk to other teams for 1974. I had
been four seasons with Lotus. I went to see Brabham, where Bernie was
now, and Tyrrell, because Jackie was retiring. And McLaren. Marlboro was
finishing with BRM and they came to me and said they would go with me
to whichever team I chose. It was a big responsibility. I knew Brabham
could be very good because, technically, Gordon Murray was on the edge.
Tyrrell had won so much with Jackie. McLaren had never won a
championship, but I liked the feel of the team with Teddy Mayer. So I
said to Marlboro, ‘I am going to McLaren,’ and they said, ‘OK, we’ll
back you up.’ And Texaco came with us too. Then Colin call me, he say,
‘Emerson, I don’t want you to go.’ I say ‘Colin, thank you, I am going
to miss you, but I have to go.’ I felt sad because I was one of Colin’s
greatest fans, after four years working together.
“McLaren had four good people at the top: Teddy was the boss, very
well organised, very good at planning everything. Phil Kerr, who’d been
with Bruce McLaren since the beginning, and Alastair Caldwell as chief
mechanic. And Tyler Alexander – he’s still there, at McLaren, after 40
years! Gordon Coppuck designed the M23, a simple, straightforward car.”
Emerson’s first race for McLaren, in Argentina, was beset by minor
problems, and it was won by his veteran team-mate Denny Hulme. But the
second race, in front of a delirious home crowd at Interlagos, he won.
There were only two more victories that season, but a string of podiums
racked up the points. He took the drivers’ title, and McLaren its first
constructors’ crown.
Emerson had always been concerned about the avoidable dangers of
Formula 1, following the lead of Jo Bonnier and Jackie Stewart in this
regard. “Jo was killed at Le Mans in 1972, and Jackie retired at the end
of 1973. In 1975 I was reigning champion, so I wanted to say what was
right. The whole safety structure was bad in those days. At some tracks
the medical care was terrible, with no proper equipment to keep a driver
alive. When I arrived for the Spanish GP in Montjuich that year, I went
for a run around the circuit to have a look at it. I could see the
barrier was just sitting there, with no bolts to hold it in some places.
It was a disaster. I talked to [FIA President, Jean-Marie] Balestre and
the circuit director, and they promised it would be finished properly,
but nothing happened. In qualifying I drove slowly round in second gear.
Marlboro had guests there from all over the world and I had to make a
welcome speech to them on Saturday. I said to John Hogan of Marlboro, ‘I
know I’m under contract, and defending World Champion, I accept the
risks of motor racing, but this is beyond what I should accept. I am not
driving tomorrow.’ I said it in my speech to the guests as well.
“Then the organisers said they would impound the McLaren transporter
if I refused to drive. So I told Teddy I would do one lap in the race
and then stop. That’s what I did. Balestre had a meeting with the FIA
commission right there and they took away my licence, suspended me for
three races. Balestre said if the FIA passed the track as safe then the
World Champion had to race. I left the circuit as soon as I’d done my
one lap of the race, went straight to the airport and flew home to
Switzerland.
“When I landed at Geneva airport there was a TV crew waiting to
interview me, I assumed because I’d walked away from the race. What I
didn’t know, what they wanted to ask me about, was Rolf Stommelen hit
the barrier and was launched into the crowd. He had broken legs, wrist
and ribs, and four people in the crowd were killed. We wasted four lives
for nothing. Montjuich was never used again and, of course, I heard no
more from Balestre about my ban.”
Marlboro was to stay with McLaren for 24 seasons, but after 1975,
with two more victories and another second place in the drivers’
championship, Emerson astonished the world by moving to the Copersucar
Fittipaldi team. Wilson and Emerson had first talked about setting up
their own team in 1973 and, with sponsorship from a giant Brazilian
sugar co-operative and an adventurous car designed by Richard Divila,
the team came into being during 1974. But in 1975 Wilson had a miserable
first season, and neither car nor team seemed capable of winning races.
“It was a challenge for me. Looking back, it is a decision I regret
now. I don’t know if I would have won more championships.” (Emerson’s
replacement at McLaren, James Hunt, won the title in 1976.) “Maybe. But
the word ‘if’ doesn’t mean anything in motor racing. My time with the
Fittipaldi F1 operation was very tough, very frustrating. Can you
imagine how difficult it was trying to build a car in Brazil, on
Brazilian money? But I learned a lot from it, for my life and for my
future.”
From being a winner and a champion, Emerson became an also-ran. There
were non-qualifications and retirements, and only the occasional lucky
point. In 1977 there were three fourth places, and in 1978 a rousing
second place in front of those Brazilian fans, this time at Jacarepagua.
But that was to be the zenith.
The team struggled on through 1978 and 1979, and when Walter Wolf’s
F1 team was wound up Fittipaldi took over the remains for the 1980
season. It inherited designer Harvey Postlethwaite, team manager Peter
Warr and driver Keke Rosberg, and the young Adrian Reynard joined
straight from university. Keke earned third in Argentina, and Emerson
did the same at Long Beach. But Fittipaldi Automotive never looked like
becoming a serious player. At the end of 1980 Emerson stopped driving,
but continued to manage the team.
“For two years I tried to get enough finance to run the team
properly, but I couldn’t. For a Brazilian team to design and build a
Formula 1 car was fantastic in my opinion, but the media in Brazil
didn’t understand why we didn’t get race-winning results right from the
start. They criticised us and bombarded us, and that drove away
potential sponsors. It was very demoralising for me.
“Also, I didn’t like the ground-effect cars that were coming in by
1980. There was not so much finesse in driving them. You just had to
have big balls. Every extra kph of speed you carry into the corner you
increase the downforce, but when you lose it skill doesn’t save you. In
1982 we stopped the team. I believed then that I had retired from motor
racing for ever.”
He ran his businesses in Brazil, and went back to kart racing for
fun. In 1984 promoter Ralph Sanchez asked him to drive a March-Chevrolet
GTP in his three-hour round-the-houses Miami race. “I said no to him. I
told him I was retired, I was happy with my life in Brazil. He called
me again, and again, and finally I said yes. I’d never been to Miami –
sometimes I’d just slept in the airport there on my way home to Brazil –
and I said to myself, I like this place. So I got in the car, and it
was so good to get back in a cockpit. I put the car on pole. In the race
we were challenging for the lead when a driveshaft broke. I went to
Disneyworld the next day, and a local guy called Pepe Romero was trying
to get hold of me. He said, ‘I am putting together a CART drive for
you.’ I called Chris Pook, who ran the Long Beach Grand Prix, he was an
old friend, and I said to him, ‘This guy wants me to run in CART. You
know everybody in the USA, can you handle it for me, like a driver
manager?’ He says OK, and we work together.”
Indianapolis had held a fascination for Emerson since he was a kid
reading the magazines in Brazil. “At Lotus I used to ask Colin to tell
me about going to Indy with Jim Clark. Then it nearly happened with
McLaren. I tested Jimmy Rutherford’s winning 1974 McLaren-Offenhauser at
Indy, and it was beautiful to drive, but those cars were fragile then.
Texaco wanted me to do an Indy programme with McLaren in 1975, but the
clash with the F1 calendar was difficult. I was concentrating on the
World Championship, and I didn’t want to do it that way. I only wanted
to go to Indy if I could do it properly, and if I felt safe in the car.
“By 1984 the cars were using carbon fibre, and were much stronger.
And I found that I loved the challenge of the ovals. It was the mental
approach, the technical approach, setting the cars up right. I always
liked fast corners, and the ovals suited my driving style. You never
feel comfortable on an oval if you are going fast enough, but you have
to be very smooth. It was so different from the ground-effect days in
F1. I felt like I was reborn.”
Emerson drove for three different teams in his first CART season,
eventually standing in for the injured Chip Ganassi with Pat Patrick.
Staying with Patrick, he won the 1985 Michigan 500 by a tenth of a
second from Al Unser Sr, and after three more strong seasons he won the
1989 Indianapolis 500 after an awe-inspiring last-ditch battle with Al
Unser Jr, leaving the Indy lap record at 224mph. With four more
victories that season, he was crowned CART Champion.
For 1990 he moved to Penske, where he was reunited with his old
McLaren team manager Teddy Mayer. There were more wins, including
Indianapolis again in 1993. In 1996, now aged 49, he decided that this
would be his last season. “The day before the Michigan 500 I called
Roger Penske and I said, ‘Roger, I’ve decided to retire at the end of
this season.’ He said, ‘As a team owner I’m going to miss you, but as a
friend I’m very happy.’ Then in the race the next day I crashed.
“I qualified fourth, second-quickest of the Mercedes engines behind
Greg Moore, who was third. He was a rookie then. Jimmy Vasser and Alex
Zanardi with the Hondas were in front. I ran very strong on full tanks
in the warm-up, and I didn’t want to get stuck behind Greg, I wanted to
get the slipstream from the Hondas. So I decided to go high above Greg
at the start. It worked perfectly, and I was three-quarters past him
when he lost a little downforce at the front. He slides up into my car,
and I go backwards into the wall. I was doing between 190mph and 200mph.
According to the black box, the impact was 160G. It was a big hammer. I
broke vertebrae, I had a collapsed lung, internal bleeding.”
Doctors said only Emerson’s fitness saved him from more serious
injury, or death. One medic said such deceleration was “not really
compatible with survival” and that his fitness levels were comparable to
an athlete in his late 20s rather than a man in his 50th year. But his
racing days were done. “I thank God”, he says now, “that I am still
here.”
Just a year later he had another brush with death when, flying his
microlight aircraft over the Brazilian wilds with his six-year-old son
Luca, he crash-landed into a swamp. He suffered further spinal injuries.
For several hours until rescuers arrived, little Luca, who was unhurt,
had to flap his arms to ward off the circling vultures, which were
attracted by Emerson’s blood-soaked clothing.
He was briefly tempted back into the cockpit for the Grand Prix
Masters series last year, and had a good battle with his old CART
sparring partner Nigel Mansell at Kyalami. “It’s a shame it hasn’t got
the finance now. I hope it happens again.” For now he has the ethanol
project, the fruit business – with 600,000 orange trees in a huge
plantation 200 miles north of São Paulo – the car accessory range, the
performance car exhibition.
“I was so lucky in my career because I worked with all these good
guys – Denis Rowland, Colin, Peter Warr, Teddy. I was always learning
with these people. When I left Formula 1, I believed I had retired for
ever. I never thought that one day I would drive Indianapolis. Or win
Indianapolis, I never dreamed that.
“I raced against three generations: when I started in F1 there was
Graham Hill, Jack Brabham, gods to me. There was my generation, Ronnie,
Jackie, Lauda, all those. And the next generation too – I remember an
incredible dice with Jacques Villeneuve, my last year in CART. I have
been so lucky in my life.”
