Thursday,

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.

29/1/1929, Gerald F. Hoyt is born in Chicago, USA.

Jerry Hoyt appears in Formula 1 stats with four starts, but all of them happened at the Indy 500, where he had his name written in the race book as the youngest Pole Position Winner in 1955. Sadly he died less than a month and a half later during a AAA Sprint Car race in the State Fair Speedway in Oklahoma City when his car rolled in turn three.

Born: 29th of January 1929 in Chicago, USA.
Died: 10th of July 1955 in Oklahoma City, USA, aged 26.

29/1/1950, Jody Scheckter is born in East London, South Africa.

Scheckter got noted on his debut during the 1972 South African GP as a brave and wild guy with astonishing car control. But young Jody quickly gained the wrong kind of fame by causing a massive pile-up at the first lap of the 1973 British Grand Prix, the second crash within two weeks. The right guy to calm this quick but overenthusiastic youngster down, was Ken Tyrrell, who hired him for the 1974 season to replace the retired Jackie Stewart. In the following years he’d been mostly among the title contender and with the Wolf team he came close in 1977 as runner-up to Niki Lauda. It finally worked out when he joined Ferrari in 1979 and won the title straight away. Having achieved his life time ambition he seemed a bit dull in 1980 and duly retired at the end of the year. After being involved for some time in a business of simulation equipment for firearms training in the US, he only showed up at the race tracks again when his sons took up racing. Nowadays he is into organic farming in the UK.

29/1/1915, Brian Shawe-Taylor in Dublin, Ireland.

Brian Shawe-Taylor was a regular and accomplished competitor on the British domestic Formula 1 scene in the late 1940s but only drove in two world championship Grands Prix. In the 1950 British GP he shared a private Maserati owned by Joe Fry and finished 10th. In 1951 Shawe-Taylor enjoyed significant successes in the regular round of British national Formula 1 races at the wheel of an ERA, his best result came in the 1951 Ulster Trophy race at Dundrod finishing 3rd in an ERA behind winner Giuseppe Farina and Reg Parnell, and by finishing 8th in the 1951 British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Three months later, at the 2nd lap of the Daily Graphic Trophy race at Goodwood, he suffered a serious accident, being thrown out of his car after a collision with Antonio Branca’s Maserati. In a coma for many weeks, he eventually made a full recovery, but decided it was probably wiser to quit the sport.

Born: 29th of January 1915 in Dublin, Ireland.
Died: 1st of May 1999 in Cheltenham, UK, aged 84.

29/1/1940, Kunimitsu Takahashi is born in Tokyo, Japan.

The first Japanese rider in history to win a motorcycle Grand Prix, riding a 250cc Honda to victory at Hockenheim, Takahashi switched to car racing in 1965. His only appearance on a Formula 1 grid came at the wheel of a Tyrrell in the 1977 Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji finishing in a respectable 9th place. He went on to win the domestic sports car championship on four occasions in the 1980s and has since retired to run his own team in the Japanese Super-GT championship.

29/1/1949, Tim Wright is born in Uxbridge, Middlesex

Wright’s motorsport career began as a design draughtsman at March Engineering and he then moved on to McLaren to work under Gordon Coppuck. In 1979 he joined Fittipaldi Automotive and as the team ran into financial difficulties Tim accepted to work again for Coppuck, who had joined the Spirit-Honda F1 team. John Barnard brought him back to McLaren at the end of 1983 to work as a design engineer and as Alain Prost’s race engineer during the the Frenchman World Championship campaigns in 1985 and 1986. For 1990 he joined Peugeot Talbot Sport engineering Derek Warwick to the World Sportscar Championship in 1992 and Warwick/Dalmas/Blundell car in the Le Mans 24 Hours race. After a short stint with the Jordan F1 team in 1993 Tim rejoined his old Peugeot Sport colleague Andre de Cortanze, now technical director at Sauber. At the end of 1995 Wright returned to England and took over the engineering of the Benetton test team and continued with the team when it was sold to Renault. Nowadays he is involved in Renault’s single-seater lower formulae in the UK.