Grand Prix Insider

31st of January – Today is the birthday of Alan van der Merwe, who can rightfully claim to be the fastest Formula 1 driver ever – on a straight line. On July 2006 the now extinct Honda F1 team broke FIA class world records with Alan behind the wheel of one of their especially prepared F1 cars with a 3-litre V10 engine, ending up with an average speed of 397.360kph [246.908mph] over two runs of the Bonneville flying mile. At the same time, he set a new class record for the flying kilometer, with an average speed of 397.481kph [246.983mph]. Both speeds as well as the one-way mark of 400,459 km/h are the fastest officially measured speed by an F1 car.

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30th of January – 60 YEARS AGO: Bernard Dudot is born in the French town of Nancy and would become Monsieur Turbo for his employer Renault in the mid-1970s. Developing the revolutionary 1.5-liter turbocharged Formula 1 engine, Dudot was the driving force behind the secret project that became a reality when Jean-Pierre Jabouille took the prototype Renault F1 car to the Michelin test track at Ladoux, near Clermont-Ferrand, for the first time in early 1976. A year later Renault Sport anounced their F1 project and within a couple of months entered its first Grand Prix at Silverstone. Two years later Jabouille scored the first of many F1 victories for Renault in the French GP at Dijon-Prenois. Certainly the engine wasn’t to blame that Renault failed to win a World Championship in the turbo era. But coming back to the the first ever test with the top secret prototype F1 car: Do you know under which codename Renault was trying to hide this official works project?

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29th of January – Emerson Fittipaldi writes yet another chapter in racing history as he crosses the line in 2nd place at the 1978 Brazilian GP as the first Formula 1 World Champion to finish a round of the Formula 1 World Championship on the podium on home soil, driving a car build and entered by his own team. Sadly it would prove to be the only top result he ever achieved with with the Copersucar entry.
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28. Januar – Victory and fastest race lap at the opening round of the 1973 F1 World Championship for Emerson Fittipaldi, beating both the Tyrrell of Francois Cevert and Jackie Stewart in the Argentine Grand Prix at Buenos Aires, went better than the reigning World Champion and his JPS-Lotus-Team could have asked for. With things beginning the way it had ended in 1972, Little did Emerson suspect that his new team-mate Ronnie Peterson, this time with a DNF due to a blown engine, would be the one responsible for some headache later in the season.

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27th of January – Clearly this blog is about early Grand Prix racing up to today’s F1 circus. So forgive me if I jump on any excuse I can find to show off some of my favourite machines from a wider range of motor sport categories. Like today, when there’s a fine opportunity to feature my favorite race car in the early 1970s, the awe-inspiring 1000hp Porsche 917/10. After all this car dominated the 1972 CanAm-Series with one George Follmer at the wheel, today 75 years old. Happy birthday George!

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26th of January - Today would be former British Formula 1 driver David Purley’s 64th birthday. Looking at the picture above, showing what’s left of his LEC after a head-on shunt in pre-qualifying for the 1977 British GP at Silverstone, it’s fair to say that the 15th of July 1977 was David’s second birthday. After all he’d survived a deceleration from 173 to 0 kph within 66.0 centimeters. That corresponds to 179.8 G, the highest G-force any human being has ever survived. He was rescued with multiple fractures to his legs, pelvis and ribs from the totally destroyed chassis, but recovered well enough to celebrate a comeback.

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25th of January – After securing pole position and fastest race lap in the 1975 Brazilian Grand Prix, Jean-Pierre Jarier laps the Interlagos circuit faster than anyone else during the 1976 race, too. Despite going almost 8/10 of a second quicker than race leader Niki Lauda, yet again the Frenchman misses out on his first GP win. Again lacking reliabilty of his ride ruined it for Jean-Pierre. This time the thottle on his Shadow DN5B stuck open when he was challenging Lauda for the lead, causing him to crash out 7 laps from the chequers.

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24th of January – James Hunt sets his mark on his debut for the McLaren team by conquering pole position for the 1976 Brazilian Grand Prix, lapping the Interlagos circuit two-hundredths faster than reigning World champion Niki Lauda. The Ferrari driver, however, would score the first win of the season the next day.

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23rd of January – The arrival of Carlos Reutemann in top level racing in Europe in 1971 had created sufficient interest for the Argentines to organize a Grand Prix at the old Buenos Aires track and this opened the season in January 1972. Practice proved to be sensational as World Championship debutante Reutemann, with only a couple of non-championship F1 outings experience on hand, beat World Champion Jackie Stewart to pole position. Carlos’ dream debut rocked the establishment as only Mario Andretti had done before and Jacques Villeneuve achieved after him. Even more impressive: Contrary to Andretti and Villeneuve the Argentine newcomer wasn’t even in the best car. So it was no surprise Stewart took the lead from Reutemann right at the start and went on to win the 1972 Argentine GP. The Brabham driver initially hung on to a fina 4th place until he dropped out of the points, having to stop for new tires, finishing 7th.

22nd of January – 50 YEARS AGO: Mike Hawthorn, Britain’s first ever Formula 1 World Champion after a fierce battle with Stirling Moss for the 1958 Driver’s title, is killed in a road accident at the A3 Guildford by-pass in southern England. Story goes he had spotted Rob Walker and his Mercedes-Benz 300SL and accelerated past the Mercedes on the wet and narrow road at over 100 MPH with a cheery wave. But then the Jaguar spun through a right hand bend, clipped a traffic island and crashed sideways against a tree. Mike Hawthorn was found in the Jaguar’s back seat, alive but dying. The reigning World Champion had for some time been suffering from an incurable Kidney disease and had, at most, eighteen months to live anyway. It would have been an unpleasant and painful death. So Mike Hawthorn died the way he had lived – on the limit, driving fast and having fun.

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