Jack Lewis - The original F1 Welsh Dragon

The WRDA Welsh Young Driver of the Year Award is dedicated to the drivers, Jack Lewis & Tom Pryce both who carried the Welsh Dragon into F1.

Jacks driving in the early 60s marked him as one of the smoothest and most promising racers on the grid and although he says he doesnt make any great claims to be Welsh, Jacks  grandfather was Welsh, he married a Welsh girl and spent over 40 years sheep farming in Llandovery. That is enough to qualify him to play football, rugby or cricket for Wales so we were happy to claim him too!

Robert confirmed "Jacks era was before fast motorways and fast ferries giving the journeys to and from events an epic quality. The circuits too represented motor racing in the raw , before safety barriers, safety belts and safety cells in cars, requiring couarge as well as skill, making it an heroic age."

For instance the 1961  Italian Grand Prix at Monza was the last time the full banking and road circuit was used at Monza,  and it   was without the chicanes they have today. Jack qualified 15 out of 30 and was 4^th; the first private entry, beating Tony Brooks' works BRM by a 10^th of a second, the last un-laped car.

For 1962 he bought a supposedly works supported BRM V8. His best result came in the non-title Pau Grand Prix, after a race long struggle with Ricardo Rodriguez in the works Ferrari , with the red dragon is clearly visible by the car number. N.B Ricardo was the older brother of 70s Grand Prix winner and sports car ace Pedro Rodriguez, and was generally reckoned to be even quicker!  Disillusion set in with the BRM as the car was suspiciously under-powered.  (it was noted that BRM might make a good chassis, but there was only ever one good engine, reserved for the works No 1, at the time Graham Hill)

At the Monaco Grand Prix Jack equalled the practice time of the works BRM No. 2 driver Ritchie Ginther, but was excluded from the race to make way for slower but better known competitors. The car was returned to BRM who reimbursed the �7000 selling price and he competed for the rest of the season in his old Cooper. (Average wages at the time were about �10 a week for 47 hours & an average house was �2,700). He now wishes he would have carried on and built his own F1 car like McLaren or Brabham did, but said it was ironic that he didnt get this kind of attention at the time, but the TV and papers in the 1960s hardly featured motorsport.

Jack Lewis  Principal Results

Tom Pryce