Grand Prix Insider

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?

30/01/1901, Rudolf Caracciola is born in Remagen, Germany.

Rudolf Caracciola was nicknamed Karatsch, or Regenmeister (Rainmaster) for his prowess in rainy conditions. He won the first-ever German Grand Prix at the Avus track in Berlin right away, won the 1930 European Hillclimb Championship and made history in 1931, becoming the first non-Italian driver to win the Mille Miglia. In 1932 Caracciola, won the Monza and German GPs but suffered a serious accident at the 1933 Monaco Grand Prix, seriously disabling him for the rest of his life, as he shattered his hip which left him with one leg shorter than the other. Tragedy struck again during his convalescence in Switzerland, his wife Charly passed away in an avalanche accident. Caracciola eventually made a comeback winning the new European driving championship three times between 1935 and 1938. He set a record of 432.7 kph (268.9 mph) over the flying kilometre on 28 January 1938 in a Mercedes-Benz W125, which still remains the fastest ever officially timed speed on a public road.

After World War II Caracciola returned to auto racing but as much as he tried hard to be competitive, age and injuries took their toll. He never participated in the Formula 1 World Championship, inaugurated in 1950. Instead he took part in sports car races and retired after he survived a massive accident in 1952 at Bremgarten with a badly broken leg. His legacy is that of one of the greatest European race car drivers of the first half of the 20th century and a person who overcame serious injury and misfortune to excel and succeed in the sport he loved, impressing especially his almost unbelievable prowess in bad weather. Rudolf Caracciola died of a bone disease in 1959. In 1998, Caracciola was elected to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.

Born: 30th of January 1901 in Remagen, Germany;
Died: 28th of September 1959 in Kassel, Germany, aged 58.

30/1/1939, Bernard Dudot is born in Nancy, France.

Bernard Dudot began his career in motorsport with the Alpine company in 1967 working on the design of a Formula 3 engine, an early shot by Renault at a major sporting involvement which would lead to Formula 1 nine years later. During 1975 Dudot applied all his knowledge obtained during studies in the US on a turbocharged engines to develop such a version of an already existing 2-liter V6 Formula 2 engine for the Le Mans 24 Hours as well as the revolutionary 1.5-liter turbocharged F1 engine, which was entered for the first time at the 1977 British Grand Prix. Two year later Jabouille scored the first of many F1 victories for Renault in the French GP at Dijon-Prenois and for the next seven years Renault was a major force in F1, thanks to Dudot’s fabulous powerplant, but failed to win a World Championship.

In 1980 Dudot became technical director of Renault Sport and remained at Viry-Chatillon after Renault officially pulled out of Grand Prix racing at the end of 1986. With a handful of engineers, he began studies for a normally-aspirated V10 engine and 15 months later Renault concluded a partnership with Williams that lead to Nigel Mansell winning the company its first World Championship in 1992. The Renault V10 engine became the dominant force in F1, winning five Constructors’ titles and four Drivers’ titles. At the end of the 1997 season Renault handed over its equipment to Mecachrome and pulled out of F1 for a second time.

Dudot switched to Prost Grand Prix in the role of technical director but was replaced in June 1999 by Alan Jenkins. After a stint in the US, working on the Infinity engine program in the Indy Racing League and then with Menard Cheever Technologies, he returned to Renault Sport in 2003 as Deputy Managing Director. He left the company after Fernando Alonso’s World Championship title in 2004 to become engineering director of the whole GP2 series, a role he still holds till present.

30/1/1917, Paul Frère is born in Le Havre, France.

Despite being born in France, Paul Frère held Belgian citizenship and raced on a semiprofessional basis for 15 years under Belgian license, including 10 Formula 1 races with a an astonishing 2nd place in the 1965 Belgian GP as his best result and a brief appearance in the 1966 Grand Prix movie. He also won the 1960 24 Hours of Le Mans, driving for Ferrari with fellow Belgian Olivier Gendebien. His greatest talent, however, lay in his ability to relate his experiences to others through the written word. Frère has contributed to many magazines, and has written several highly acclaimed books on his experiences in the automotive world. He never fully recovered from severe road accident in Germany in September of 2006 suffering a shattered pelvis, several broken ribs and punctures to both lungs. Paul Frère passed away in February 2008 and prior to the Belgian Grand Prix that year, the Stavelot Bend at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit was renamed into Curve Paul Frère in his honor.

Born: 30rd of January 1917 in Le Havre, France;
Died: 23rd of February 2008 in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France.

30/1/1901, Giovanbattista Guidotti is born in Bellagio, Italy.

Always an Alfa Romeo employee, Giovanbattista Guidotti became riding mechanic and got his first taste of victory in 1930 when he sat in the winning car at the Mille Miglia, driven by the legendary Tazio Nuvolari. He by then also been promoted to head test driver and was entered as a driver at competitions for the first time that year. In 1937 he was entered for the Italian Grand Prix at Livorno but didn#t finish due to technical problems. Guidotti then became Alfa Romeo’s team manager after WW2 and put together an impressive team of drivers like Achille Varzi, Nino Farina, Count Carlo Felice Trossi and Frenchman Jean-Pierre Wimille to take the mighty Alfettas to several GP wins.

He would also grab the steering wheel, whenever necessary. At the 1947 Belgian GP, for instance, he took over from an exhausted Trossi to finish 3rd behind Wimille and Varzi. Together with the company’s chief engineer Orazio Satta he laid the foundation for the company’s successful racing department – called Reparto Corse – that went on to score a dominant series of Grands Prix wins in 1950, with Farina becoming the first Formula 1 World Champion in history and Fangio following up in 1951. Giovanbattista Guidotti stayed with the company until 1963, when he retired, and died of age in 1994 in Milan.

Born: 30th of January 1901 in Bellagio, Italy;
Died: 2nd of July 1994 in Milan, Italy, aged 93.

30/1/1937, William Bruce Gordon Johnstone is born in Durban, South-Africa.

A runner-up in the 1961 South African Championship, Johnstone came to Europe hoping for a deal to drive a works BRM for the Owen Racing Organisation in the 1962 South African GP and perhaps beyond. Prior to that he took the BRM P48/57 to a 4th place in the non-championship Oulton Park Gold Cup and then finished 9th in his home GP coming from 17th on the grid. However, it remained Bruce’s only foray into Grand Prix racing. On the positive side he won the 9 hours of Kyalami sharing with David Piper the Englishman’s Ferrari 250GTO.

30/1/2009, Edward Everett Mayer dies.
Teddy Mayer got involved in motor sport with the running of Rev-Em Racing, a Formula Junior team set up by his brother Timmy and a college friend Peter Revson. In 1963 Rev-Em took part in European Formula Junior and Teddy met Bruce McLaren. Despite the shock of Timmy being killed at a Tasmania series race in Longford in 1965, Teddy continued in the sport. He had helped to establish Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. and ran the team after Bruce’s death. McLaren was successful in CanAm, CART and won 2 Formula 1 World Championships, with Emerson Fittipaldi in 1974 and James Hunt in 1976.
When McLaren merged with Ron Dennis’s Project 4 Racing in 1980, Mayer continued as joint managing-director but decided to sell his shares in the team a couple of years later and founded the Mayer Motor Racing CART team in 1984 CART Championship, only to get hired by Carl Haas to run the short lived Haas/Force Formula 1 team in 1986. Teddy then became vice-president of Penske Racing and deputy chairman of Penske Cars Ltd. in the UK.

His son Tim Mayer made a considerable carrer in motor sports, too. Tim is Chief Operating Officer of the American Le Mans Series, delegate of the FIA GT Commission, Vice President of the Automobile Competition Committee of the United States (ACCUS) and COO of the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA), the premier sanctioning body of sports car racing in North America.
After Teddy stepped down from his position as vice-president, he remained in a consultancy role with Penske up until 2007 when he retired for good. Teddy Mayer died 2 years later at his home in England aged 73.

Born. 8th of September 1935 in Scranton, USA;
Died: 30th of January 2009 in Woking, UK, aged 73.

30/1/195,1 Ferdinand Porsche dies.

Ferdinand Porsche was an Austrian automotive engineer. Best known for designing the original Volkswagen Beetle and for his contributions to advanced German tank designs: Tiger I, Tiger II and the Elefant. 1937 Porsche designed a racing car for Auto Union to compete with Daimler-Benz in Grand Prix motor racing from 1934 onwards. The V16-powered car became known by the name P-Wagen and was both innovative and successful. The dominance of the Silver Arrows of both brands was only stopped by the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Porsche became increasingly involved with the construction of the Volkswagen factory inWolfsburg and handed over his racing projects to his son, Ferry.

During WW2 Ferdinand was held in a French prison for 22 months without trial. While his father was in captivity, Ferry tried to keep the company in business. Among other desperate attempts he signed a contract with Piero Dusio selling the intellectual property on a Grand Prix racing car, later knwon as the Type 360 Cisitalia. The innovative 4WD design never went into races, but the money it raised for Porsche was used to redeem the father from French prison. At the end of 1950 Ferdinand Porsche suffered a stroke, of which he didn’t fully recover, and he died on 30th of January 1951. In 1996, Porsche was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame and in 1999 posthumously won the award of Car Engineer of the Century.

Born: 3rd of September 1875 in Maffersdorf, Germany;
Died: 30th of January 1951 in Stuttgart, Germany, aged 75.