Why the Hesketh 308 is one of the best cars of its era | Frankel’s Insight

And the truth is, that small as the team was, it had a future World Champion at the wheel and a future Constructors’ Championship-winning designer in Harvey Postlethwaite. In addition, the team included Jim Clark’s old mechanic Beaky Sims and Nigel Stroud, who’d go on to design the Mazda 787B which earned Japan’s first ever win at Le Mans. Small the team might have been, idiots they were not.

But the late Doc Postlethwaite was key, realising there were neither the funds nor time to design a super-sophisticated and innovating racing car. His view was that: “What really matters about a racing car is the overall concept, the detail design is relatively unimportant. We had to make a car that was conceptually good but reliable, so we had to be fairly conventional.

“The overall concept was of a small, narrow track, very aerodynamic type of racing car rather than perhaps a McLaren or Lotus type of racing car.” And if it had a secret, that was it: do it simply, but do it well.

It was also designed to fit Hunt’s 6ft 2in frame, something that would never have been allowed only a few years later as designers shrank the cockpit in all directions around the driver in search of aerodynamic advantage. But it meant that, unlike most cars of its ilk and era I’ve driven, it fitted me perfectly.

And you can’t really overstress how important it is, when you’re about to drive a car with not much less than 507PS (373kW) weighing not much more than 500kg, that you’re comfortable behind the wheel. Because when you’re not in agony, worrying about whether you can even get your foot on the brake and your knees stopping the steering-wheel from turning, you can concentrate on your driving. In a car as fast and valuable as this, that’s really rather important.

If you think the exterior looks old relative to modern machines, it’s science fiction compared to the cockpit which, with the usual splat of poorly located, unlit and small Smiths instruments, differs in no material way from Formula 1 machines of the early 1960s.

The tell-tale on the rev-counter was set to 10,800rpm but with the Ford-Cosworth DFV in the back proving to be one of the more flexible, less manic versions I’ve tried, it made sense to keep perhaps 1,000rpm short of that and still benefit from a level of shove no road-going Aston Martin Valkyrie or Mercedes-AMG Project One would recognise.

The Hesketh 308 is one of the loveliest cars of its era I’ve driven, all the better for being on a set of quite old slicks because finding the limit was so much easier as a result. These cars are set up so soft compared to modern F1 machines because their microscopic levels of comparative downforce don’t require massive spring rates just to support their bodies in corners, so it sort of rolls into each turn and slides gently out, feeling more like a 500PS Caterham than one of the fastest cars on the planet, which it was half a century ago.

It is such a tactile thing, too, all cables and rods, electronics restricted to supervising sparks and fuel distribution alone. The steering is very light, but flooded with feel of the kind that inspires instant confidence. It tells you it’s going to understeer in slow corners, which it duly does, but in the quick stuff the car felt nailed in place. According to the good doctor, that was one of the car’s key strengths in period.

The only real problem is that you feel such a fraud driving down a pitlane in a car with a teddy bear on its nose and the single word ‘James’ on its side. This is the actual car in which he won the International Trophy Race at Silverstone in 1974, sliding down the inside of Ronnie Peterson’s Lotus 76 at impossible speed through the then near flat Woodcote corner, and the imposter syndrome is as strong in here as in any car I’ve driven.

Hunt had more talent in his toenails than I will ever know, but to drive his car at speed, on a proper racetrack was still to hear, see and feel what he heard, saw and felt. And what a privilege it was.

Goodwood will celebrate ‘The James Hunt Years’ at the 83^rd Members’ Meeting presented by Audrain Motorsport. The event takes place on the 18^th & 19^th April 2026. Tickets are on sale now for GRRC Members and Fellows.

You can sign up for the Fellowship now. Click here to find out more.

Images courtesy of Getty Images.