John Horsman, one of motor racing’s behind-the-scenes greats, has died at the age of 85, his family has confirmed. The Lancastrian had been battling heart and kidney complications.
His career did more than merely touch one of the real golden ages of sports-car racing, it played a key role in the lasting legend of the 1960s and ’70s.
With JW Automotive he ran and improved the Ford GT40 and Porsche 917 – think of a racer worth their salt with a roof over their head and Horsman ran them: Pedro Rodríguez, Jo Siffert, Jacky Ickx, Derek Bell, Brian Redman, Richard Attwood, Jackie Oliver, Gijs van Lennep. The list goes on.
The JW 917 of Pedro Rodríguez/Leo Kinnunen starts another lap of the 1970 Le Mans – the car would retire after just four hours when its fan expired
Horsman is widely credited with taming the untameable: the 917. In 1969 drivers would call it undriveable, some would even break it or hope it broke just to escape its cockpit, but JW Automotive stabilised it to such a degree for 1970 that the factory adopted its changes.
Thanks to his improvements at its tail, no longer would the car wander at more than 200mph at the end of the Mulsanne Straight; no longer would drivers steer with just fingertips.
