CHRIS Amon, who died yesterday aged 73, had the rare distinction of being regarded as the best driver to never win a world championship Grand Prix.
Racing great Mario Andretti once commented that Amon’s luck was so bad that “if he became an undertaker, people would stop dying.”
Despite having numerous races snatched from his grasp, the amiable New Zealander – like Stirling Moss, the best driver to never win the world title – was not bitter, but thankful to have merely survived a brutally dangerous period of motor racing where a great many of his contemporaries did not.

What it doesn’t reveal are the misjudgements that probably kept him from achieving true greatness – such as leaving Ferrari at the end of 1969, just before the Scuderia struck one of its inevitable purple patches, and making questionable career decisions.

Fans and experts alike bemoaned Amon’s terrible luck yet again that day, but some suggest he should not have been cutting the corners, where the apexes were littered with sharp stones (one of which saw Helmet Marko, now Red Bull team advisor, lose an eye).

But Amon did enjoy one great success in Europe, joining good friend and countryman Bruce McLaren in winning the Le Mans 24 Hours for Ford in 1966, an historic event that just two months ago enjoyed its 50th anniversary. Amon, however, was in the final throes of battling cancer while McLaren had died in a testing crash in 1970.

Amon should be remembered as a great driver – many regarded him as highly as Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart – rather than just an unlucky one.