Tuesday,

3rd of March - 49 candles need quite a lot of surface to be positioned upon, so I’ll be too busy today cutting that huge cake. You figure out yourselves who, when and what, OK?

3/3/1978, Gary Anderson is born in Coleraine, N. Ireland

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Gary Anderson‘s career took off at Brabham, initially helping to build Formula 3 cars but soon being promoted to the Formula 1 team. In the after hours he built the Anson SA1 F3 car with fellow colleague Bob Simpson and raced it himself. At Brabham he rose to chief mechanic before switching to McLaren in the same role. After a stint with Mo Nunn’s Ensign team, Anderson decided to focus on the Anson F3 and SuperVee cars. But it was difficult to make money in junior formulae and so Gary headed for the US to work as a chief engineer for the Galles IndyCar team. In 1988 he became technical director of Bromley Motorsport and took Roberto Moreno and Reynard to the International F3000 title. That got him a job at Reynard as F3000 designer for the 1989 and 1990 chassis. Then came his break in F1, when Eddie Jordan asked him to design the Jordan-Ford 191, which became a immediate success and from 1992 Anderson was the technical director of the young team and remained with Silverstone based outfit until they took their first GP win with Damon Hill in 1997 in Spa. He signed for Stewart Grand Prix late in 1998 and helped to develop the Stewart-Ford SF3 which won its first race at the European GP in September 1999 driven by Johnny Herbert. He stayed on when the team became Jaguar Racing at the start of 2000 but the Jaguar R1 was not a success and at the end of the year Anderson was replaced with Steve Nichols. After a year in the United States working for Reynard in CART, Anderson returned to F1 in a new role with Jordan, working alongside technical director Henri Durand in 2002 and 2003.Since then he has been in semi-retirement, working as a consultant to Dallara and as a commentator with Irish television.

3/3/1978, Nicolas Kiesa is born in Copenhagen, Denmark

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Nicolas Kiesa arrived in Formula 1, having risen through junior formulae in Britain and Germany as well as a season in Formula 3000 winning the 2002 Monaco GP support race. Kiesa was drafted in to replace Justin Wilson at Minardi in the midseason 2003 when the Englishman was hired by Jaguar to replace Antonio Pizzonia. Unable to find an F1 drive in 2004, Kiesa made a bid for a Minardi seat in 2005 but lost out at the last minute to Patrick Friesacher. He later became test driver for the team, before moving to Jordan as their 3rd driver. After a stint in the German DTM series the Dane worked as a TV commentator for the national network and started to build his his own GAR sports car. Nicolas runs his own garage in Copenhagen and is an importer and tuner of Japanese cars, especially involved in drift and drag racing.

3/31992, Maria Grazia Lombardi dies

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Lella Lombardi raced touring cars in Italy and worked her way up to the British Formula 5000 Championship in 1974 with help from Shell. She tried in vain to qualify for the British GP in an old Brabham. Italian nobleman Count Vittorio Zanon sponsored her in 1975, allowing Lella to line up with an ex-Vittorio Brambilla March 741 in the South African Grand Prix, the first woman to do so since Maria Teresa de Filippis 17 years earlier. In her 2nd GP, now at the wheel of a new 751, Lella finished 6th in the accident-shortened Spanish GP, becoming the 1st woman to enter a World Championship ranking and later in the year she switched to Williams. She began the 1976 season again with March but was soon replaced by Ronnie Peterson. After an unsuccessful attempt with RAM’s old Brabham her F1 career was over. Instead she became a successful sports and touring car racer and, in 1977 at Daytona, became the first foreign woman to take part in a NASCAR race. Late in the 1980s, her career was still on full swing, Lella Lombardi was diagnosed with cancer and died in early 1992 at the age of only 48.

Born: 26th of March 1941 in Frugarolo, Italy;
Died: 3rd of March 1992 in Milan, Italy, aged 50.

3/3/1956, Ernst Loof dies

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Ernst Loof was an Engineer, a multiple motorbike champion head of racing department at Auto Union and then BMW in the pre-war era. After WW2 he joined Schorsch Meier, Lorenz Dietrich and Werner Miethe in manufacturing sports cars with aerodynamically advanced bodies and using BMW’s 328 as donor. Unfortunately the Veritas company went bankrupt, so Loof established shop at the Nürburgring in 1951, where he built the „Veritas Nürburgring“ sports car and a couple of Formula 2 race cars, known as the „Veritas Meteor“. It was at the wheel of Meteors that Hans Herrmann, Willi Heeks and Loof himself took part in the 1953 German Grand Prix. But the Veritas boss was forced to retire early in the race. In 1953 BMW bought the Veritas brand and its projects, while Loof became responsible for R&D projects within the car builders sports and competition department. 2 years after taking part in the Monte Carlo Rally for BMW, Ernst Loof passed away on the 3rd of March due to brain cancer.

Born: 4th of July 1907 in Neindorf, Germany;
Died: 3rd of March 1956 in Bonn, Germany, aged 48 years.

3/3/1960, Perry Edward McCarthy is born in Stepney, UK

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Perry McCarthy appeared in Formula 1 in 1992 driving for the chaotic Andrea Moda team, run by Italian playboy and entrepreneur Andrea Sassetti. McCarthy hardly managed a couple of laps in practice to prepare for the race, so it was hardly surprising he failed to qualify for any Grand Prix. The team folded before the end of the season in controversial circumstances and McCarthy was left without a drive. The East-Londoner never managed it past qualifying in F1, but tested for both Williams and Benetton teams during the 1990s. The targeted role as a permanent test driver unfortunately never came his way. He then returned to sports car racing and, in 2002, released „Flat Out, Flat Broke“, his autobiography offering the insight of an often not so easy career.

3/3/1947, Otto Stuppacher is born in Vienna, Austria

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Otto Stuppacher was entered by ÖASC Racing for the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix with nothing but a number of hill climbs and sports car races as a background. Unsurprisingly the organizers refused the entry due to the driver’s lack of experience. But for the Italian GP in Monza ÖASC Racing managed the Austrian and his private Tyrrell for the event. But Stuppacher was so slow, he lost 8 seconds in qualifying … to the next slowest driver! Disappointed Otto returned home. Meanwhile back in Monza 2 teams got under scrutiny and 3 drivers got their times erased. So he would actually have been allowed to start on Sunday. When he finally found out, it was too late. ÖASC seemed encouraged by this and invested, together with Stuppacher, in taking part in the overseas races in Canada and USA, where the Austrian proved to hopelessly slow. In Watkins Glen he lost 27 seconds on the pole-setter. On his fastest lap! That’s when Otto Stuppacher’s motor sport career came to an end. He passed away on August 2001 at his home in Vienna.

Born: 3rd of March 1947 in Vienna, Austria;
Died: 13th of August 2001 in Vienna, Austria, aged 54.