Chris Amon

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Chris Amon bigraphy, stories - Retired motor racing driver

Chris Amon : biography

20 July 1943 –

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Christopher Arthur Amon MBE (born 20 July 1943 in Bulls, New Zealand) is a former motor racing driver. He was active in Formula One – racing in the 1960s and 1970s – and is widely regarded to be one of the best F1 drivers never to win a championship Grand Prix. His reputation for bad luck was such that fellow driver Mario Andretti once joked that "if he became an undertaker, people would stop dying".

Apart from driving, Chris Amon also ran his own Formula One team for a short period in 1974. Away from Formula One, Amon had some success in sports car racing, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in .

Legacy

Despite never winning a championship Formula One Grand Prix, Amon won eight non-championship GPs, the Silverstone International Trophy, the 1000 km Monza, the Daytona 24 Hours, the Tasman Series and, perhaps most significant of all, the famous 24 Heures du Mans (alongside Bruce McLaren). Many of these races attracted some of Amon’s otherwise more successful fellow F1 drivers, all of whom he was able to beat.

In Formula One, Chris Amon took part in 96 Grands Prix, achieving 5 poles, leading 183 laps in 7 races, reaching the podium 11 times and scoring a total of 83 Championship points. Amon holds the record for the most different makes of car raced by a Formula 1 World Championship driver, with thirteen. A biography ‘Forza Amon’ by journalist Eoin Young charts Amon’s racing career and gives some insights into his personal life. The book makes clear one point on which Amon himself disagrees with most commentators, the issue of his bad luck. Amon has pointed out on several occasions that he competed for a decade and a half in Formula 1 and survived some serious accidents, notably in 1976, whilst others, including friends like Bruce McLaren, suffered serious injury and death. In 2008, motorsport journalist Alan Henry rated Chris Amon as his 13th greatest driver.

Reflecting on the 1968 racing death of Jim Clark, Amon said: "If this can happen to Jimmy, what chance do the rest of us have? I think we all felt that. It seemed like we’d lost our leader." In 1995, Amon was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame.

Amon’s name has been given to a motorsport series involving Toyota cars and has lent his name to the Chris Amon International Scholarship to support drivers who have become champions in the New Zealand Toyota Racing Series to further their careers in single-seater racing.

Racing career

1960s

1963

For the 1963 Formula One season the Parnell team were using the year old Lola Mk4A, powered by 1962 spec Climax V8 engines. Amon was teamed with the very experienced Maurice Trintignant for the first race of the season at Monaco and his Grand Prix career started with what was to become typical bad luck: Trintignant’s Climax developed a misfire, so he took over Amon’s car.

At the 1963 Belgian Grand Prix Amon was partnered by Lucien Bianchi and started ahead of him from fifteenth position. After nine laps, however, an oil fire ended his race. He continued to experience mechanical problems at the Dutch, Mexican and German Grands Prix; and after an accident in practice for the Italian Grand Prix left him hanging out of his car’s cockpit with three broken ribs, he missed both the Italian and United States rounds.

Amon usually qualified in the midfield and generally outpaced his team-mates, who included his good friend Mike Hailwood. His best results of the year were seventh at the French and British Grands Prix. During this time, however, Amon’s social life was attracting as much attention as his driving. He was a member of the Ditton Road Flyers, the social set named after the road in London where Amon shared an apartment with American Peter Revson, Hailwood and Tony Maggs.

Parnell was nonetheless impressed with Amon’s results in what was regarded as less-than-competitive machinery and promoted him to team leader. Parnell died from peritonitis in January 1964 and his son Tim took over the team.