James Howden Ganley

Born in Hamilton, New Zealand on 24 December 1941, Ganley's youthful ambitions were to either race yachts or play for the All Blacks New Zealand Rugby team. After attending the 1955 New Zealand Grand Prix at Ardmore with his father and brother, his ambitions changed to racing in Formula 1. After leaving school, he became a reporter for a newspaper and wrote a column for a magazine. Once he obtained his license, he raced in local events in his mother’s Morris Minor. He progressed to a Lotus Eleven, but to fund his racing ambitions, he worked three jobs: on a construction site during the day, waiting tables in a restaurant at night, and pumping gas at weekends. Once he obtained the Lotus, he entered it for the 1961 New Zealand Grand Prix at Ardmore and won his class in the sports car race, as well as a race for New Zealand drivers only. He went on to race for two seasons. In a wet race at Dunedin, his car ended up wrapped around a telegraph pole, but he was fortunately uninjured.

He eventually moved to the United Kingdom and began a career as a mechanic. He became involved with Mike Moseley, who was planning to produce a road car called the Falcon 515. After helping get the car into production, he was allowed to build a lightweight version and race it. A friend, John Muller, helped him. They shared a "bedsit over a railway line, ice on the inside of the window, single light socket hanging from the ceiling." From there, he moved on and joined the Gemini Formula Junior team as a mechanic and driver. He competed in his first single-seater race at Goodwood. Following this was the Nurburgring, where he finished 14th out of 41 starters. The team later lost their sponsorship and folded.

He then became involved with the Talon F3 car. An offer came from Bruce McLaren, and he became one of the first employees of Bruce McLaren Motor Racing, working alongside Wally Wilmott, Tyler Alexander, and Eoin Young in "a shed in New Malden full of earth-moving equipment: dirt floor, work bench, vice, set of welding bottles, a hacksaw and a file." During this period, he worked as crew chief at Drummond Racing for Skip Scott and Peter Revson during the 1966-67 Can-Am season. After purchasing a Brabham BT21, he raced for two years in the series, then switched to a Chevron B15.

Between 1960 and 1962, Ganley competed in many events throughout New Zealand driving a Lotus Eleven. Throughout this period, he was earning a living by working as a foreman for a concreting company.

Towards the end of the 1969 F3 season, despite starting 22nd on the grid at Brands Hatch, he was 11th by the fourth lap, sixth on lap 14, and on the last lap he was fourth after overtaking Francois Cevert in a Tecno. Going into the last corner while fighting another car for third, he put a wheel on the grass, which allowed F.Cevert to get past. However, although he eventually finished fifth, he had broken the circuit’s F3 lap record at an average of exactly 100mph.

His F3 racing then led to F5000 with a McLaren M10B-Chevrolet in 1970. During the year, he finished fourth in Oulton Park's Gold Cup race and finished second in the series to Peter Gethin. McLaren regularly tested the F5000 car at Goodwood. On one occasion, Denny Hulme was also there with the Can-Am car. They needed someone to go in the passenger seat and "take the readings on a manometer or something they had in there. And nobody wanted to get in! Bruce asked me to do it. That was pretty entertaining, Denny right on the limit with me taking the readings. It was fantastic for me, because I totally trusted Denny. I also did a little bit of Can-Am testing in the M8." Howden described Bruce McLaren as "the greatest leader of men I’ve ever met in my life…he was one of the nicest people, always happy and smiling, even in adversity, cheery, friendly. And he had that amazing ‘can do, will do,’ attitude."

In 1970, Ganley finished second to Peter Gethin in the European Formula 5000 championship with help from his friend and mechanic Barry Ultahan. This caught the attention of the BRM Formula One team, who signed him to a contract for 1971.

Ganley's F5000 racing brought him to the attention of the BRM F1 team, who signed him for 1971. He took a strong fifth place in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza and fourth at Watkins Glen. In non-championship races, he finished second in Oulton Park's Gold Cup, fourth at Hockenheim, and fifth in the Race of Champions. In taking his fifth place at Monza, he was involved in the closest finish in GP history when just 0.61 seconds covered the top five finishers. In the team, he watched the strong competition between Pedro Rodriguez and Jo Siffert. "As the new boy I saw their rivalry at first hand. Each was determined to beat the other. If I ever set a faster time than one of them in practice or in a test, the other was always delighted. They each wanted the new kid to put the other down. But they were both just wonderful characters, wonderful blokes."

In 1971, Ganley started off the season promisingly with fifth place at the non-championship Race of Champions. At the end of 1971, having scored two points finishes during the year, Ganley was awarded the Wolfgang von Trips Memorial Trophy for the best performance by a newcomer to Grand Prix racing.

Continuing with the BRM team the following year, his best finish was fourth at the Nurburgring. In 1972, Ganley raced for the Marlboro BRM team and finished 13th in the Championship with four points. For the 1973 season, Ganley signed up to drive an Iso–Marlboro car for Frank Williams Racing. At the 1973 Canadian Grand Prix, he was almost declared the winner because of a timing mix up with the pace car; when the results were corrected, Ganley was classified sixth. He said, "My wife (Judy Kondratieff, a U.S. sports car racer who was an SCCA regional champion) was the best keeper of lap charts. It was not unusual for other teams and sometime race organisers to double-check what they had against hers. We went over and over what she had for weeks after that race. There’s no doubt that Emerson Fittipaldi won, with Jackie Oliver probably second and me probably third. We thought, initially, that I had won but when we checked and rechecked, I was in third. As it dried up, I saw what was happening in the pits, and I said there was no way I was going in there. My teammate, Tim Schenken, had stopped, but I waited till things calmed down. I eventually made a very good stop, and the pit lane was clear; I was in and out. So, off I go again — but I didn’t know if anyone had gone by me while I was in the pits.’ When he came up behind the safety car, they were telling him he was leading and when it pulled off and continued racing, “Emerson got past and maybe Ollie (Jackie Oliver). But Peter Revson never passed me on the track or while I was in the pits.” His wife Judy took her lap chart to the officials but they weren’t interested and Howden was classed as finishing sixth, and given one point.

A suspension failure in practice for the 1974 German Grand Prix while driving for the Maki team left Ganley with serious foot and ankle injuries that ended his Grand Prix career. He found himself in hospital with Mike Hailwood, who had also crashed, and told how team boss Louis Stanley helped them. He arranged a helicopter flight from the hospital to Cologne then “persuaded British Airways to take two stretchers on a scheduled flight, met us at Heathrow, got us to St Thomas’ Hospital and laid on the great Mr Urquart — the surgeon who’d looked after Stirling Moss and John Surtees after their big accidents. Urquart’s technique for rebuilding bone was, if you can stand the pain you should walk on it. In 16 days I was hobbling around St Thomas’.

Ganley and François Cevert drove a Matra-Simca MS670 to second place in the 1972 24 Hours of Le Mans. He also had a third place finish in a Can-Am race at Riverside with a BRM P167 and co-drove (with Paddy Driver and Mike Hailwood) to third at the Kyalami 9 Hours with a Chevron B19.

In sports cars that year, he was usually paired with Derek Bell in the John Wyer Gulf Mirage and took fifth in the 1000Km Zeltweg, fourth at the Watkins Glen 6 Hours, plus second in the Spa 1000 Km race (though with Vern Schuppan).

In 1975, a Ganley F1 project was initiated. The Ganley-Cosworth 001 car was hand-built by Howden Ganley on his premises at Windsor. It was almost readied, and Ganley had two DFV engines at hand, but it never ran in anger. Ganley eventually used the equipment to start Tiga Race Cars with fellow driver Tim Schenken the following year.

In 1976, Ganley and former Formula One driver Australian Tim Schenken founded Tiga Race Cars as a British-based race car constructor and race team. The team had plans to compete in Formula One in 1978, but the project did not proceed due to sponsorship withdrawal.

This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.