Lifetime Achievement
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It seems as if November is awards season in London and two Lifetime Achievement Awards stood out amongst many worthy winners in numerous categories at various awards ceremonies.
Royal Automobile Club Historic Awards
At the Royal Automobile Club Motoring Awards dinner, which took place in the Pall Mall Clubhouse on 21 November, a special Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Bob Dance, who sadly could only be present by video. The Award recognises an individual who has, in the opinion of the Club, made an outstanding contribution to British motoring history and heritage, or to the British historic motoring and motor racing movement, across many years. This is the only category of the annual awards ceremony that could not be nominated and is the only category recognising achievement beyond the previous twelve months.
pman Clive Cha with Bob Dance
Formula One celebrates its 75th anniversary next year, and during that time, 34 different drivers and 15 different constructors have been crowned World Champion. Of those, Team Lotus people and cars won six drivers’ titles and seven constructors’ titles.
For almost half of that time, Bob Dance was a constant presence in the pitlane, as a mechanic at Team Lotus, including as Chief Mechanic from 1977 until 1994. He was present for many of motorsport’s greatest moments, and he’s worked with some of the greatest drivers of Formula One.
When Jim Clark was making a mockery of the Formula One field in the early 1960s, Bob was there. When Graham Hill was conquering the streets of Monaco, it was Bob who was keeping his car going. When Mario Andretti breezed to World Championship victory at the wheel of a Lotus 79, Bob was on the team! And when Ayrton Senna was cutting his teeth at motorsport’s top end, and beginning to flourish on the world stage, there was Bob, guiding the young Brazilian to his first victories.
Bob helped a spectacular rollcall of drivers, including Ronnie Peterson, Nigel Mansell, Elio de Angelis, Mika Hakkinen, Johnny Herbert, Nelson Piquet, Derek Warwick. And the list of cars Bob has worked on is just as illustrious, most notably the all-conquering Lotus 49 and 79.
Bob joined Lotus in 1960, initially building gearboxes for sports cars, before moving over to the racing side of the factory in 1965. He began in Formula Two and moved quickly into the Formula One stable in 1967. By that point, Lotus was the dominant force in Formula One, having won drivers’ and constructors’ titles in both 1963 and 1965. It repeated these feats in 1968 and 1970, by which time Bob had been promoted to Chief Mechanic. With Graham Hill and Jim Clark, Lotus had arguably the sport’s greatest driver pairing, both at the top of their game and driving for the best team on the grid, in the best car, masterminded by Colin Chapman.
Bob left Lotus in 1970 to join rivals March and then Brabham, but the allure of Lotus was too much, and he returned to the Norwich team in 1976. Two years later Formula One experienced a revolution in design with the introduction of ground-effect aerodynamics, spearheaded by Lotus with the Lotus 79. And sure enough, Bob Dance was there, keeping it ahead. He continued working for the team right through the 1980s and early ‘90s until it folded in 1994.
Bob remained utterly devoted to his craft, joining Classic Team Lotus as preparation guru in 2004, a role he held until he retired in 2019, continuing to maintain the very cars he worked on for so many years at the sharp end of the Formula One grid.
If ever there was a man who embodied the ideas of ‘lifetime’ and ‘devotion’, it is most certainly Bob Dance. He is a fantastic and deserving winner of the Royal Automobile Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
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