Pease black-flagged for being too slow

0 0 August 15, 2025 Edit this post

by Bill Buys

AL Pease was a Canadian racing driver of great note.

He set many records in domestic saloon and sports car racing – and even one in international Formula 1.

He was the nation’s most successful driver, put BMC products on the map, won more trophies than any other driver and was rewarded for his efforts by being inducted into the Canadian Motoring Hall of Fame.

However, his Formula 1 brush with fame didn’t go quite to plan: he became the only F1 driver ever to be blackflagged . . . for driving too slowly.

Alan Victor Pease was born in Darlington, Yorkshire in 1921, and joined the British Defence Force when he was 17.

He served in India with the British Army, then transferred to the RAF and was shipped to what was then Rhodesia for flight training, then on to Egypt for operational training in Hurricanes -- and towards the end of WWII he was flying in a Typhoon squadron.

At the end of the war Al felt he didn't want to stay in England and headed for the US, where he worked as an illustrator for the SKF bearing company.

Much of his education in the UK had been in art.

After a while he moved to Toronto, working as an illustrator on the catalogues for Simpsons, a major department store, then set up his own company, which he ran for 25 years.

Al’s dad was a motorcycle racer in the UK so he had some racing already instilled in his DNA.

In his new country Al raced just about anything he could get his hands on, from Minis to a supercharged MGB and even to Dan Gurney's first Eagle, the Coventry Climax-powered Grand Prix car.

"I started racing in 1952 or 1953 in a Riley 1.5 and joined the British Empire Motor Club or BEMC because they seemed to be the only club in racing in Canada," he wrote.

"I soon got rid of the Riley and bought a 1953 TD, then I decided to get serious and began to race a twin cam MGA.

"I did very well with the twin cam and was the only British car that could stay with the Porsches, although I never finished higher than third.

"I had to find a way to go quicker and that started with an MGB.

"Because of my success with the twin cam, I now had a full BMC sponsorship. They gave me a car and a budget, and I was racing their Minis as well.’

Pease was very successful in both the MGB and the Austin Mini-Coopers, won their respective class championships and BMC even bought large ads in the Canadian press congratulating him.

His many wins and enthusiastic support from BMC gave the British marques great publicity, with resultant sales.

He was voted ‘Driver of the Year’ in 1964, by the Canadian Racing Drivers’ Association.

He next started running a Lotus 23 and to the dismay of the race organisers back then, he had his sponsor's name emblazoned on the side of the car.

Advertising on racing cars was a big no-no in those years, but Al and a few other drivers banded together and after many discussions the authorities gave in and Al’s Lotus appeared with the name of Honest Ed on the side of the car.

Honest Ed started off with a discount store and went on to become the owner of two theatres and a promoter of the arts in Toronto.

"Then, about 1967, Bob Hanna, Paul Wilson and I started Centennial Motor Racing," Al wrote.

"I had a new Lotus 47 and we got Castrol Canada to sponsor me."

That led to Al to getting the pilot’s seat in the Gurney Eagle Climax and an entry in Canada's first international Formula 1 Grand Prix.

It was in 1967 and the Grand Prix was held at Mosport, a circuit the industrious Al helped design.

Castrol Canada had hoped to get a Canadian entered in the great race.

"They wanted to be the ones to get the first Canadian driven car in the F1 GP. They told me they had the opportunity to buy the F1 Eagle Climax of Dan Gurney, who was also sponsored by them.

"I advised them to just rent the car, but they wanted to buy it. It was a beautifully built car, but it was no longer competitive.

"However, I did qualify for the race in the compulsory 10 per cent of the fastest time. Dan Gurney told me that if I didn't get it started with the first push of the button, that would be it. The battery would be flat."

His first Grand Prix, run in the rain, was an embarrassment.

The car stalled on the grid and he lost six laps while his mechanics changed the battery.

Once he got going, he spun on a part of the track far from the pits, and the engine again wouldn’t restart.

Instead of retiring, he jumped out, ran back to the pits in the rain to get another battery, then hoofed it back and installed the battery.

Jack Brabham won that race from Denny Hulme, both in Brabham Repcos, Dan Gurney was third in an Eagle Westlake and Al Pease ended the day unclassified, and 43 laps behind Brabham and Hulme.

The next year, Castrol again entered him again in the Canadian GP which was run at at Mont Tremblant, with the same car and engine.

But he didn’t make it to the start due to a serious engine malfunction. That race went to Hulme, from Brabham, with Pedro Rodriquez third in a BRM.

Then came the Grand Prix of 1969, back at Mosport Park.

Oh dear.

Jackie Stewart, driving a Matra Cosworth, was already the world champion for that year and he and Belgium’s Jacky Ickx in a Brabham Cosworth soon battled for the lead.

The two touched wheels, both zoomed off on to the grass, and only Ickx made it back – and went on to win.

Teammate Jack Brabham came in second, with Jochen Rindt third in a Lotus-Cosworth.

Fourth was the Matra-Cosworth piloted by Jean-Pierre Beltoise, who had been bumped off-track as he lapped Al Pease for the umpteenth time, but recovered to finish strongly.

Pease also got in the way of all the other and much faster drivers and was regarded as a moving chicane.

He was also branded as being a general menace, battling with race leaders despite being many laps behind.

When Jackie Stewart was nearly taken out by the slow-moving Canadian, Ken Tyrrell lodged a complaint and Pease was disqualified.

That was when Al was on lap 22 by which time Ickx and Brabham had completed 43 of the 90-lap race.

But Al hadn’t quit just yet: he continued to race in Formula 5000 and Formula A, then raced in historic car events until 1988.

Despite that embarrassment at Mosport, the Canadian motorsport fraternity still viewed Pease is nothing short of a living legend, and many years later, in 1998, he was inducted as an Honorary Member of the Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame.

“It is doubtful that any other driver in the history of Canadian motorsport has collected more trophies than Al Pease, winning a steady stream of regional and national championships in a variety of cars for almost 30 years," the CMHF said.

Two companies even produced 1/43rd scale diecast models of Al in the Eagle, complete with his trademark 69 competition number.

Al packed a lot of living in his 92 years and while he won fame for the wrong reasons in his Formula 1 attempts, what he did achieve would be impossible to duplicate today.

Sad, then, that a man who did so spectacularly well in decades of motorsport, should be best remembered for that one big faux pas in 1969.

Al Pease eventually retired to Sevierville, Tennessee, and died there in 2014.