It was barely 18 months since he'd won the fastest Grand Prix in history, crossing the line first at Monza in his BRM P160 in one of the closest finishes ever seen. Some of the drivers he'd beaten that day were in this race - Ronnie Peterson, Emerson Fittipaldi, Mike Hailwood, Howden Ganley . . .It felt good to be racing against them again, even if he was back in a Formula 5000 car since his acrimonious parting with Louis Stanley's BRM team.
Those same P160 BRMs had started the Race of Champions from the first three places on the grid, but Niki Lauda and Vern Schuppan had both gone out, and Jean-Pierre Beltoise was behind him now after a pit stop for a tyre change. James Hunt had closed right up on him in the Surtees TS9, hired for him by Lord Hesketh. But it was his first Formula 1 race and Hunt was coming under pressure himself from Beltoise. Gethin was confident he could keep them both behind him for a few more laps. Finishing in the first three in this race was going to be sweet.
Then, with less than five laps to go, as he came up towards the fast, right-handed Hawthorn Bend, he was confronted with waved yellow flags and frantic activity. Up against the bank on the left of the track was the smouldering wreckage of Mike Hailwood's Surtees TS14 - the car that had been leading. A lower link had fractured on the suspension, sending Hailwood slewing out of control at around 150 mph. The car had hit the bank on the right and bounced back across the track before finally coming to a halt and catching fire.
Hailwood had jumped out, unhurt but cross, and as Gethin picked his way carefully through the debris, he knew he was now second, with just the McLaren M23 of Denny Hulme ahead of him. This race was getting harder to believe by the minute.
And then his pit signals started to show that he was catching Denny. Soon he could see for himself that he was catching Denny. The McLaren had to be in trouble. A thrust bearing had broken on the clutch and Hulme was stuck in third gear. As they came into the long right-hander at Clearways for the penultimate time, Gethin's blue Chevron was right behind the white and orange Yardley McLaren. As Hulme laboured onto the pit straight, Gethin dived past and into the lead.
Less than two minutes later it was all over. In front of 44,500 people at the circuit and millions watching on BBC Television the Chevron took the waved chequered flag - the first Formula 5000 car ever to win a Formula 1 race. Gethin's hand punched the air and everyone in the Chevron pit jumped up and down, sharing delight and disbelief in equal measure. The eight years since Derek Bennett built his very first Chevron had often seemed something of a fairytale. But this time the men from Bolton had really slain the giants. Tomorrow morning they would pinch themselves and discover it had all been a dream.
But the next morning, there was the face of Peter Gethin beaming out from the front page of the Daily Mail, the race's sponsor, as he received his trophy from Mrs Vere Harmsworth, wife of the chairman of the paper's publishers, Associated Newspapers. And inside, there was his car, with the Chevron badge emblazoned along the side for all to see. Suddenly the fortunes of Bolton Wanderers football team wasn't the only Monday morning talking point in the Lancashire town. The world had heard of Chevron racing cars. Meanwhile the motoring press were asking, now that his cars had won their first Formula 1 race, when was Derek Bennett going to build his first Formula 1 car?
It was a question they weren't able to ask him at Brands Hatch, for the simple reason that he wasn't there. The 1973 season seemed to have got off to a particularly hectic start for Chevron. Three of Derek Bennett's brand new B25 Formula 2 cars were already out in South Africa, where they had been racing in the national Formula 1 series. After the success of the prototype Formula 5000 car the previous year, there were a number of orders for the production version of the B24, and four of them were wanted for the Race of Champions weekend, which began with practice for the Formula 5000 cars on Friday March 16. The car which Peter Gethin was to race was eventually destined for the United States, where Gethin would be driving it for Doug Shierson's Marathon Oil team. Shierson would be at Brands to see the car put through its paces before he took it back to America. The car was finished with a couple of days to spare and Derek took it to Oulton Park on the Thursday, using his own formidable driving skills to give it a shake down.
Two more B24s, for Yorkshireman Tony Dean and his American team-mate, Bobby Brown, were finished at three o'clock on the Friday morning. They would have to compete at Brands in familiar Chevron fashion - "straight out of the box". Time caught up with the unceasing workers at Bolton before they could finish the fourth B24 - the car with which Belgian Teddy Pilette would win the European Championship for Count Rudi Van der Straten's team.
It had been just as hectic a week earlier when the Formula 2 season kicked off at Mallory Park. Dave Morgan's customer B25 had been ready to take the grid. But Peter Gethin's works B25 had barely made it, and the second works car for Gerry Birrell was still in the factory.
With everyone away at Brands Hatch for three days, the Chevron factory in James Haslam's old mill in Bolton was how Derek Bennett liked it - quiet. Now he could get on with the business of building racing cars unmithered. Birrell's car needed to be ready for Hockenheim in three weeks' time when the European Formula 2 series would really get under way, and there were B23 sportscars to be finished in time for the opening round of the European 2-litre Sportscar Championship at Paul Ricard on the same day.
When there was work to be done, Derek Bennett got on and did it. So he wasn't at Brands Hatch on March 18 to see his greatest triumph unfold. Indeed he didn't even watch the Race of Champions on television. His girlfriend could tell him who'd won when he went over for a meal after he'd finished at the factory.
To those immersed in the egotistical world of international motor racing it might have seemed strange that "Mr Chevron" was not in the thick of the celebrations at Brands Hatch, accepting the accolades and savouring the triumph. Just what kind of a man was this?
If you asked that question then, or now, to any of the people who counted themselves privileged to have known Derek Bennett they would answer the same thing. Derek was . . . . Derek.
© 1991 David Gordon.