Friday favourite: How a friendly face helped a newcomer navigate F1’s most chaotic season

Quite apart from the unfavourable competitive situation of March Grand Prix in 1982, the year’s dizzying politics and the deaths of two fellow Formula 1 drivers made it a tough baptism for Raul Boesel. Driving the DFV-powered 821 chassis that used three different tyre suppliers during the season, the Brazilian never figured in the points. Starting 17th in Rio and finishing eighth at Zolder were the limited high points.

For Boesel, who clipped the stalled Ferrari of Didier Pironi at Montreal moments before Osella driver Riccardo Paletti fatally rammed it, there is no doubt that what was already “a difficult time” in his rookie season would have been more so without the laid-back Jochen Mass alongside him in the camp.

With any other experienced driver, Boesel anticipates that there would have been “a fight inside the team just to get the better parts” that would have made things “much harder”. But for Mass, a driver who had continued to compete in long-distance touring car and sportscar events alongside F1, the notion of a team-mate automatically being enemy number one never applied.

Boesel observes that the German “was very honest with exchanging information on the cars”, which made a huge impression. “I never forget that,” adds the driver who latterly became a stalwart of Indycar racing and finished runner-up five times in Dick Simon Racing Lolas between 1992-94.

A British Formula 3 graduate in 1982, Boesel admits to feeling star-struck when he arrived in a paddock that contained big beasts Niki Lauda, Nelson Piquet and Gilles Villeneuve. This is perhaps unsurprising given the speed of his ascent; he had been racing Formula Fords just two years beforehand, finishing runner-up in both the 1980 RAC and Townsend Thoresen championships, before placing third in British F3 aboard his Murray Taylor Ralt in 1981.

“When I arrived [in F1], I was very shy,” admits Boesel, who went on to win the World Sportscar Championship with Jaguar in 1987. “And Jochen, he opened his arms and was very good at teaching me a lot of things. He was very experienced, was very welcoming on his side on the team.”

Mass was in a very different position in his career to Boesel; he had made his debut with Surtees back in 1973, and had won the red-flagged 1975 Spanish Grand Prix at Montjuic Park during a three-season stretch with McLaren. Returning to F1 after a year out in 1982, he had little to prove and was happy to assist his young team-mate, offering a preview of the mentor role he would later take on with the Mercedes junior team towards the end of the decade in Group C.

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Mass was even supportive on occasions the youngster outqualified him during their 10 Grands Prix together (which would have been 11 had the RAM-run Marches and its fellow FOCA-aligned teams not boycotted the San Marino Grand Prix at the peak of the FISA-FOCA war, following the disqualification of Piquet and Keke Rosberg from the Brazilian GP).

Boesel was quicker in three of the first four races on Pirellis, before a switch to Avon for Monaco swung the needle in the direction of Mass. It was a misstep, as the British manufacturer had announced its intention to withdraw from F1; team boss John Macdonald bought up Avon’s stock, but development was non-existent.

“We had very difficult times at March but a few races that I qualified ahead of him, [Mass] was kind of happy. He would say ‘congratulations on how you did’, he was friendly all the time”
Raul Boesel

Ultimately the qualifying head-to-head stood at 5-5 following the French GP at Paul Ricard, where a scary crash with Mauro Baldi’s Arrows at Signes Curve prompted Mass – still shaken from his involvement in Villeneuve’s fatal accident at Zolder – to call time on F1 and focus exclusively on sportscars. The late Rupert Keegan replaced him for the remainder of a trying campaign which included two races on Michelins.

The 821 was the year’s 15th fastest car by a metric of supertimes, as March fell in behind Toleman, ATS, Osella, Arrows and Ensign. Only Theodore, with its revolving cast of drivers including Derek Daly, Jan Lammers, Geoff Lees and Tommy Byrne, and Fittipaldi (a one-car team for Chico Serra, who came to blows with Boesel in the Montreal pitlane) were slower than the second iteration of Macdonald’s collaboration with March Engineering – which by 1982 was effectively in name only.

Chief engineer Adrian Reynard had made the car stiffer and lighter than its predecessor, the first March-designed F1 car since 1977 which had been derided by Macdonald in public, but even an injection of funds from Rothmans couldn’t transform the normally-aspirated car’s competitive prospects as turbo power became increasingly potent. The cigarette manufacturer eventually terminated its support before the benefits could truly take effect.

“We had very difficult times at March but a few races that I qualified ahead of him, [Mass] was kind of happy in a way,” remembers Boesel. “He would say ‘congratulations on how you did’, and he was very friendly all the time. He spent many years in Formula 1 and everybody respected him, so it wasn’t much difference for him to be outqualified in a few races.”

Mass (left, with Adrian Reynard) bowed out of F1 mid-season during the tumultuous 1982

Photo by: David Phipps

That Mass was content to be his own man and collaborate with his team-mates, a trait that made him such an effective foil to Jacky Ickx in the works Rothmans Porsche Group C team, was evidenced by him not joining the drivers’ strike at Johannesburg’s Sunnyside Park Hotel on the eve of the South African Grand Prix. That he had been staying with friends and was unaware of the details was immaterial.

For Boesel, preparing for his first Grand Prix, the controversy over changes to the superlicence that would prevent drivers from changing teams was an unwelcome distraction.

“Jochen was the only one that didn’t go to the hotel,” points out Boesel, who naturally felt strong peer pressure to join his contemporaries. “I remember John Macdonald was hitting on the bus windscreen on the side where I was sitting and screaming ‘if you don’t come out of this bus, your career is finished’. On the other side of the bus, Gilles Villeneuve was saying, ‘Look, you guys have all the support from us, the more experienced drivers, we will not let this happen’.”

Mass set a standard that Boesel would not experience again during his all-too-brief F1 career, which concluded after just 23 starts following a 1983 season in which neither he nor Ligier team-mate Jean-Pierre Jarier could score in the normally-aspirated JS21. “When I went to Ligier it was very different,” he adds.

After switching to Indycar with Dick Simon for 1985-86, Boesel’s career peaked in 1987 when Mass was in the final year of his Porsche affiliation before the move to Group C rival Mercedes that finally netted him a Le Mans victory in 1989.

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Five wins in TWR-run XJR-8s shared with co-drivers including Eddie Cheever, John Nielsen, Martin Brundle and Johnny Dumfries earned Boesel the title, and he was regularly brought back into the fold over the next several years in parallel with Indycar commitments, adding the Daytona 24 Hours in 1988 with Brundle and Nielsen. He also contested the full IMSA schedule in 1991 along with Davy Jones in TWR’s two-car attack.

But the 66-year-old, who saw out his career in the all-oval Indy Racing League following stints racing alongside the likes of Scott Brayton (1992-93), Bobby Rahal (1995) and Scott Pruett (1997) on the other side of ‘the split’, cannot look beyond Mass for his favourite team-mate because of the lasting impression he made in a chaotic season like no other.

“Arriving in F1 with a lot of anxiety, it was a bit easier to have somebody else like that to give you support,” concludes Boesel, who today indulges his passion for electronic music as a DJ.

Boesel later encountered his 1982 team-mate when they raced in Group C

Photo by: Motorsport Images