Denny Hulme's Clockwork Orange

His Formula One career was more successful than stellar, providing eight wins, one pole position and nine fastest laps in 112 starts over a total of 10 seasons. But he not only claimed the 1967 world championship, but did so when Jim Clark was at the height of his powers, with Jack Brabham as his team-mate, and against opposition that included Graham Hill, John Surtees, Jackie Stewart and Dan Gurney.

But it was in Can-Am that Denny found his vocation. The facts are these: in six seasons he won 22 races more than any other driver; he set 26 lap records eclipsing all opponents; he claimed pole position 22 times and no-one else matched that either. By the time McLaren pulled the plug on its Can-Am activities, he had amassed more points than any other in the history of the series twice as many in fact.

“Denny could really turn it on when he wanted to,” says Tyler Alexander, an American engineer who joined the fledgling McLaren race team in 1964 and has been a vital component ever since. “He was really bloody good very determined. He loved those Can-Am’s, all that power in a car that was the class of the field. He was also a lovely guy, incredibly loyal to the team and a real team player.

The Robin Herd-designed, monocoque-chassis M6 of 1967 showed the world that McLaren could build a championship-winning car. “What no-one knew,” says Herd today, “is we actually had ground effect under the car and, without it, we would have been nowhere.” If there is an earlier claim to the use of ground effect, I haven’t heard it. With it they won four from six races and the championship. It served as something of a spur to the team. “From now on,” said Bruce at the time, “we’re going to try much harder!” And hard work, says Alexander, was the real secret of the team’s success.

Clearly this is true. The M8 was a terrific design, but it was the time that McLaren took to refine and perfect it that best explains the results. They simply tried harder, were more dedicated and professional than any other outfit until, says Alexander somewhat ruefully, “Porsche came along with all that money.”

But until Porsche ‘spoiled’ the fun in 1972, McLaren had it to themselves, and even on those rare occasions that the orange machines did not head the field home, often as not one of their customers would fill the void.

Key to this was the fact that, for all their power, the cars were also remarkably easy to drive. Dan Gurney and Peter Gethin are the two who know best, having been drafted into the team after Bruce died to drive the mighty M8D. Both would win, too.

Today, Gurney remembers the team, the car and being Denny’s teammate with almost limitless affection.

“I was reasonably near Denny in qualifying and, for the first 100 miles, I was able to hang on to him. But in the second half, I found hauling this thing around at such a relentless pace utterly knackering. In the second half, I really struggled while Denny ran away and won.” Gethin is too modest to mention that before that weekend, he’d not done a single lap at racing speed in a Can-Am car. And yet he still came second.

The point is, Can-Am McLarens gave Denny all the excuses he needed to show he was the best It was the best car out there, which provided its own special motivation, but it also needed someone with great physical strength and unyielding determination to master. Not for nothing did they call him The Bear’.

But perhaps his greatest contribution had little to do with such qualities. As Gurney recalls: “When I got to McLaren, no-one was thinking about how life was going to be after Bruce. The question was if there was going to be a life for the team after Bruce. His spirit was everywhere and the various personnel really didn’t know if they could go on. So to an extent they were looking to Denny and he helped show the way.”

Like Graham Hill at Lotus after the death of Jim Clark, so Denny kept alive the will to win after the loss of Bruce, and never with greater conviction than when behind the wheel of an M8. It was a bravura performance from a man who felt the loss more keenly than most.

Alexander is an encyclopaedia of Bruce and Denny stories, of them fooling around, plotting a world-beating team, giggling in the corner of the pit garage. Clearly Hulme’s relationship with Bruce extended far beyond that of employee and team-mate.

So by all means look at Denis Clive Hulme as a extremely competent rather than great grand prix driver, but he deserves to be considered the finest Can-Am racer of all, better even than Peter Revson or Mark Donohue.

As far as the team he raced for is concerned, Ill leave that judgement to Robin Herd, who was there, and who should know: “They were the finest group of individuals lever had the honour to work with — and by a substantial distance, too.”

Denny and McLaren deserved each other.