At 83, Ray Stone seems a fairly unassuming figure, softly spoken, measured, though the wiry ponytail might hint at youthful years spent in a less ordinary occupation.
For many he’s not likely to be considered a household name, but in New Zealand motor racing and rallying circles, he’s legendary.
Though not as a driver, his status has been earned as a mechanic and rally team manager.
Known in his youth as Bird’s Nest for the long hair, Stone’s involvement in New Zealand motor sport has been chronicled in There’s No Such Thing as ‘She’ll be Right’, motor writer Gordon Campbell’s biography of the now Taupō resident, whose lean visage, framed by wispy hair, can be seen staring at the camera from a number of mechanics-at-work photos.
The pose was a default setting for photographers, said Stone.
“I used to get a bit cynical – they’d all want the same, ‘can you open the bonnet and stand there … and look like you're tinkering with something’.”
Mind you it was what drove him – despite his mother’s wish he become a civil engineer – the lad who grew up in Alfriston began working on race cars as an 18 or 19-year-old in the late 1950s.
“I was very fortunate, they were very special single-seaters in those days.”
The first was a P3 Alfa Romeo that once belonged to Tazio Nuvolari (The Flying Mantuan), winner of 72 major races, 150 in all, enough for Ferdinand Porsche to dub him “the greatest driver of the past, the present, and the future.”
“When it left New Zealand it commanded millions,” said Stone, “it’s difficult to put a price on now and the next one was a Maserati 250F, there are a few more of them around – probably five or six.”
It had belonged to British Formula One racing driver Stirling Moss who, despite over 200 wins across several categories of competition, became ‘the greatest driver never to win the World Championship’ for his four seconds and three thirds between 1955 and 1961.
“So that was a really good start for me, beautiful engineering and machinery but also because they are such special cars.”
Stone eventually progressed from open wheelers to saloon cars, as well as rallying, which in the early 1970s was growing in popularity internationally and here.
“We went to England and built a rally car and ran it in the 1972 RAC Rally – the British International Championship rally – and then came back.”
Stone managed the NZ Wool Board-sponsored Ford Woolmark team that competed in the first international rally in New Zealand in 1973, with the team’s three cars, which included Finnish driver Hannu Mikkola, the Ford international entrant, finishing first, second and ninth.
“So that was very impressive… and from then on my career was almost totally rally team management. We ended up virtually representing Ford with our team which became the Masport Escort team.”
He remembers the 1977 Rally of New Zealand particularly fondly for the relationship that developed between him and Ari Vatanen, another Finn.
Vatanen, in his early 20s, was a new name for Ford which sent him out of Europe to get more experience and while Ford was not entering a works team, Vatanen, a works driver, would still pick up world championship points.
“Times were fairly tough then due to fuel shortages, so the rally here had no international entrants,” said Stone. “They weren’t coming this far.”
However, once Fiat heard Vatanen would be driving, it entered a full team.
“They thought we’d better do this… even though it’s only one car run by locals.”
Vatanen made his name during the race, said Stone, his crashes becoming the story of the rally.
“He was young, extremely fast, he must have gone off the road on half of the stages and some of them were quite major, so our guys were continually putting his car together which,of course, was great press. At the end of every special stage there would be this frantic team of ours completely rebuilding a demolished car.”
Vatanen overtook all three of the well-resourced Fiats several times but would then have a new mishap.
“There was only one Fiat left by the time we got to the end of the rally. Ari’s car had been rebuilt a zillion times and the winning Fiat car limped into the show grounds at the finish in Auckland and just expired and Ari arrived seconds later in second.”
In fact Vatanen’s crashes had pushed the car’s exhaust and floor up, so it was burning his foot and Lee, Stone’s wife, had been having to patch him up too.
Vatanen’s nice guy image stood in stark contrast to the Italians, with a campaign rumoured to be worth $400,000, who became “the people everybody loved to hate,” said Stone.
“Being a professional team they had helicopters and caravans, but also they were getting found out for having radio communication between helicopter and car – you weren’t allowed that in those days… and they were getting speeding tickets on the road.”
Vatanen though, would ring his mum every night – a quirk that hit the press.
“He lived in Tuupovaara, I remember that because my toll bill at the end of the rally was quite big.”
Late one night in the middle of nowhere, said Stone, Vatanen and co-driver Jim Scott saw a little hotel still lit up.
“He said ‘Jim stop, I’ll ring home’, so he went in, racing overalls and safety gear on and there was a little old lady behind the desk in this very small hotel... and he walked in, tall Finn in his racing gear, and she looks up from her knitting, and says ‘you’re the man from Finland, you want to ring your mum’.”
Stone and Vatanen still talk three or four times a year.
“Ari is a really genuine guy. After the Erebus crash he wrote a letter to say ‘Ray I am thinking of you and all the boys. Finland and New Zealand are similar sized countries, and I am sure you all knew somebody on the flight’.”
Stone smiled: “My whole life was just fun, doing what I enjoyed. I didn’t think of it as a career then or a job. I was just so lucky to do the things I loved to do.”
Credit:Stuff.co.nz
