Jody Scheckter is the only African driver to have won the Formula 1 World Championship, and indeed the only one to have won Grands Prix, being in Sweden in 1974. That came seven years after another African came tantalizingly close to a sensational victory…
It is a story which began in the city of Bulawayo, in the British Crown colony of Southern Rhodesia. This was a gold mining town on the Matzheumhlope River, surrounded by rich grazing country. It was the richest city in the colony.
It was also the birthplace of John Maxwell Love. He grew up there, attended the Bulawayo Technical High School, and was employed as an apprentice electrical fitter until World War II, when he became one of the early recruits of the Southern Rhodesian Reconnaissance Regiment. This tiny unit was soon scooped up into the South African 6th Armoured Division which was sent to Egypt in the middle of 1943. It was then fitted out with Sherman tanks and in April 1944 arrived in Italy to take part in the campaign to clear the Germans out. Towards the end of the war, Love was stationed near Monza and took a spin around the old Autodromo, riding a captured Zundapp motorcycle. Love loved it and he soon became a dispatch rider during the final campaigns of the war.
When it was over, he went back to Bulawayo, at the age of 21 and started racing motorcycles. He did not switch to cars until he was nearly 30. In 1954 he bought a Cooper-JAP Formula 3 car and became a regular competitor on the dirt tracks of Southern Rhodesia. After some success and many thrills and spills, he decided to Race in South Africa in 1957 and a year after that went to England where he raced for Ken Tyrrell in Formula Junior all over Europe and won the British Touring Car Championship in a Mini Cooper.
He seemed on the verge of an F1 career, but in 1962 had a big crash in Albi and crushed his arm. He had several operations but it seemed like his career was over. He went back home but decided to try local surgeons. After two operations, he was soon back in action. He got a break in 1964 when John Cooper telephoned and asked him to fly to Italy to stand in for the injured Phill Hill at Monza. There were mechanical troubles and no spares and so Love did not qualify. He went home again and concentrated his efforts on winning the next six consecutive South African Championships. He continued to compete in international events and in 1966 acquired the Cooper-Climax T79 Tasman car that Bruce McLaren had raced. The following year he decided to enter the car in the South African GP. This required extra fuel tanks, but the car was light thanks to its smaller engine than the average F1 unit.
The 1967 South African GP was scheduled for Monday, January 2, at Kyalami and most of the F1 teams showed up with 1966 cars. Ferrari and McLaren didn’t go at all, but it was still a good field and Love stunned them all by qualifying fifth on the grid, ahead of John Surtees, Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt and Jackie Stewart!
Come race day, he made a bad start and dropped to 10th, but others hit trouble and he gradually moved up the order. Denny Hulme led but gradually Love rose to second, ahead of Pedro Rodriguez. On lap 61 of 80 Hulme drove into the pits with brake trouble. Love was leading, with 19 laps to go. For the next 12 laps, the local fans celebrated an astonishing achievement, but with seven laps to go the car started misfiring. The pump to the auxiliary tanks had packed up and Love realised he would have to stop. By the time he rejoined, Rodriguez was 20 seconds ahead and there was no time to catch him. But even second place was an amazing achievement…
Love was then 43 but he continued winning the local championship with backing coming from the Gunston Cigarette Company of Rhodesia, as the country had become in 1965. This was the very first tobacco sponsorship of motor racing. In the end he retired to Bulawayo and stayed there, despite all the problems the country faced in the 1970, until independence and peace came in 1979. But with that came Robert Mugabe. Love ran his garage in Bulawayo until he died at the age of 80 in 2005.
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joeblogsf1 
Enjoyed that – thanks!
I went to Gifford Technical High School in Bulawayo in the 60’s
(name change happened in 1961, apparently)
My father used to have his Ford Anglia 105e serviced at Love’s garage.
I track marshalled when Love won the Kumalo Grand Prix in 1967 – In a Brabham BT20
Joe, am I correct in thinking that Jody Sheckter is also the only driver to win a Formula One championship race in a car with other than four road wheels?
No, I believe Patrick Depailler did as well, but I didn’t check
Depaiiler finished on the podium several times, but I don’t recall his ever winning a race with any version of the P34.
Well, that’s one more thing that I thought I knew but I didn’t. If ever Alan Davies quits QI and they need someone to reliably set off the klaxon, my number is in the book.
Depailler’s first win was at Monaco in 1978 with a Tyrrell 008 (I think was the designation) subsequent to the P34 6-wheelers.
Jody Scheckter is the only one, yes (Sweden ’76). Patrick Depailler did not win until 1978, when Tyrrell returned to four wheels.
No one ever win a race on three wheels?
Gilles gave it a good try at Zandvoort but it didn’t quite work out!
That sounds like a challenge. Assuming by race you mean Grand Prix.
Did someone loose a wheel just before the finish and cross the line with three wheels?
Did someone win in a Morgan?
No and no
I remember Stefan Johansson finishing second on three wheels at Hockenheim in 1987.
Didn’t win though.
I wondered about this! The way the question was asked doesn’t rule it out of the equation…
That’s why I phrased it that way, I was thinking as much about whether it could have happened that somebody limped over the line after a last lap incident as another win for a six-wheeler.
You are correct damian, Jody won in Sweden with the other P34 in second, but that was it for wins.
In retrospect, ZA67 was interesting statistically because not only were both Rodriguez and Love going for their first World Championship win, but it also turned out to be the last victory for Cooper chassis.
Great World War fact Joe.
Still was abit odd for F1 to be racing in South Africa when there was a sports ban on.
Then again BE isn’t exactly a race relations guru. He has said some upsetting things regarding race in his tenure as F1 boss.
Rhodesia…
I had an English Master from Rhodesia in 1980 to 82 at our Upper School. Jeez that man could throw a board rubber and hit the intended target like a modern day stealth fighter😡😨. After a while everybody had their eyes on the board and never said anything.
Teachers in those days were the mafia. He was the Don.Luckily he got a job in Hong Kong teaching in a English Embassy School. We had one hell of a happy 3rd year 😄.Still one bonus is I can do superb Rhodesian accent which was alot deeper than the S.African accent. We nicknamed him 💀The Undertaker 👤
Amazed I don’t remember John Love as at that age my brain was young and I was well hooked on every word that Eoin Young wrote on F1 in Autocar. I still remember some of the Tasman series guys from around that time who didn’t venture further North to F1 so some of my grey cells from that era must still be intact. Great piece and Thank You.
I was an early fan of John Love’s first time I saw him was at the old Grand Central Circuit, between Pretoria and Johannesburg – well before Kyalami days. He was driving OKV3, a brother to one of the most famous D-Types, OKV2. To this day, the one car I’d like to own is a D-Type, thanks to John Love.
A very special man. As a young boy in Durban I became his “gofer” every time the local F1 circus came to the Roy Hesketh Circuit outside Pietermaritzburg, John himself would come to the entrance gate with a ticket and pit pass for me. He had two superb mechanics in Gordon Jones and Keith Starling but it was mainly Gordon who came to the races. Although passed over by Cooper for a works drive he and Syd v d Vyver were planning an European F1 season with Syd’s Lotus 24. Syd was a far better engineer than driver and I believe that the two would have given a good account of themselves. Unfortunately the car caught alight in Syd’s workshop and the moment was gone.
The South African F1 series were run as international events and the three litre formula was introduced a year ahead of the rest of the world in 1965. This enabled the locals to be more competitive in ’66/67. The T79 arrived mid ’65 and was followed by several other 2,7 Climax engined cars. Love was able to compete with Jack Brabham in the 1965 Rand GP at Kyalami until a shock absorber failed causing him to drop down the field.
Love’s previous Cooper, a T55 was handed over to Tony Jefferies for him to gain a foothold in F1. This did not pan out for Jefferies and his only claim to fame was giving Jochen Rindt a sound beating in a world series formula vee race in the Bahamas. When Love acquired the BT20 Repco Brabham the Cooper T79 was made available to Basil van Rooyen for the 1968 SA GP.
He was never really comfortable with the Brabham and soon acquired a Lotus 49. When Charlton and van Rooyen purchased new cars Love was unable to obtain an ex works car to match them and defaulted first to a March 701 and then a Surtees TS9, neither of which amounted to much. His favourite car was the Gunston Brabham BT33 which he took over in the twilight of his career.
At the ’67 GP Love was helped to his grid position by slipstreaming the works Cooper of Jochen Rindt down the long Kyalami straight and then passing him into Crowthorne. He had lent the Rob Walker team a fuel pump, obviously the wrong one………………………………………..
Along with Hocking and Redman one of Rhodesia’s best sportsmen.
John Love had more driving class in his little toe than most other drivers ever dreamed of…. i was working in the pits for a same class celebrity race in the 80’s where all the drivers selected their keys from a hat…. John drove in his normal economical style and thrashed allcomers… I remember chatting to John and my boss Arnold Chatz over a beer that afternoon and what an interesting conversation…
Clive