As a lot as our rose-tinted retro spectacles wish to imagine that motorsports was higher within the previous days, domination has been a daily prevalence in racing’s 120-year existence. On YouTube, you could find Shell’s implausible half-hour documentary on the 1955 Belgian Grand Prix. It’s a pleasant journey again in time to when Spa-Francorchamps was in its perilous 8.761-mile type, when wire wheels and tire sidewalls bent by sustained cornering at Les Combes and Burnenville, and followers had been protected by strips of grass and a scarcity of creativeness. What it additionally reveals is that the race itself was one thing of an illustration run for Mercedes-Benz.
Driving a Lancia D50, Eugenio Castellotti had taken probably the most memorable pole positions in grand prix historical past, in solely his fifth Formulation 1 outing, and third at world championship degree. It was a rare mind-over-matter effort whereas he and his compatriots – and F1 followers usually – had been nonetheless in shock and grief over the demise of his erstwhile teammate, the nice Alberto Ascari. Castellotti’s achievement was additionally carried out in opposition to the background of the messy absorption of the Lancia F1 staff by Scuderia Ferrari – within the D50, Lancia had an awesome Vittorio Jano-designed automobile, however no cash; Ferrari had some cash, however was being crushed frequently in F1 by Mercedes.
It was no totally different on this event at Spa. Fangio’s W196 grabbed the lead at first, and by the second mile, Moss’s silberpfeil was into second. Castellotti’s retirement on Lap 17 signaled the tip of the token opposition to the Benz brutes. Fangio saved Moss at arm’s size just about all through, and round 2h40m later, gained by eight seconds. Subsequent up was 1950 world championGiuseppe Farina’s Ferrari, 1m40s adrift. His closest challenger, one other Ferrari piloted by racing journalist Paul Frère, was an identical time in arrears.
This was the second of 4 wins for Fangio that season, and it’s captured on the duvet of this situation of Classic Motorsport, wherein we do a deep dive into the legendary W196, that automobile that held a not-quite-two-year reign in Formulation 1.
Are you able to think about the response of these watching the “streamliner” mannequin being introduced out of the transporter within the paddock at Reims in 1954? Anybody who hadn’t heard of M-B’s plans could be forgiven for considering the German squad had by accident introduced a sports activities automobile to a Formulation 1 race. And people who knew higher, Mercedes’ rivals, most likely took a glance and thought “Uh-oh.”
Their pessimism was properly based: W196 was a traditional, and in its two seasons, each time it wasn’t the outright quickest automobile, drivers like Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss made up the distinction, or the automobile would beat its Italian rivals with superior reliability.
Just like the W196, however for various causes, the Chaparral 2K didn’t spend lengthy on the prime of Indy automobile racing. In 1979 it was let down by pesky points and by ’81 the opposite groups had caught up, however for one blissful season, Johnny Rutherford and Chaparral proprietor Jim Corridor noticed mild on the finish of the venturi and delivered an Indy 500 win and J.R.’s sole Indy automobile championship. The 2K’s sensible designer, John Barnard, selected an illustration of this automobile for the duvet of his 2018 biography, “The Excellent Automotive.” We’re certain he couldn’t have chosen a extra applicable automobile.
If the prevalence of the Mercedes-Benz W196 and Chaparral 2K had been comparatively fleeting, the Porsche 956/962 household made the Stuttgart-based marque a formidable pressure in sports activities automobile racing for one of the best a part of a decade. Porsche was the goal rivals aimed toward for a number of seasons, and it took concerted efforts by the like of Electramotive Nissan, TWR Jaguar and Sauber Mercedes to overthrow 962s which, even when not manufacturing unit automobiles, had been run by immensely skilled buyer outfits, burgeoning with proficient drivers, engineers, mechanics and tacticians.
It was one such buyer squad that scored the 962’s first 24-hour race win in 1985 at Daytona, however victory didn’t go to the Holbert Racing squad that had chalked up 5 victories within the again half of the ’84 IMSA season. No, on the fruits of an odd race, it was Preston Henn’s staff that, with assistance from a exceptional driver lineup, delivered the products at Daytona.
Dominance can are available in many varieties, and in terms of preeminent drivers, we’ve picked three to spotlight, two of them demoralizing their opponents over a season, one in a single race.
This 12 months marks the fiftieth anniversary of Richard Petty’s sixth and penultimate NASCAR Cup Sequence championship, wherein he set a modern-day report ratio of wins – 13 from 30 races – in that delectable (’74 mannequin) Dodge Challenger. That he backed up this stat with eight extra top-three finishes reveals that he and his Petty Enterprises staff had all of it in hand on any given race weekend. There could be nice days forward – one other championship, one other 22 wins (together with two extra Daytona 500 triumphs) to take his tally to the magic 200 mark – however 1975 was the final 12 months wherein Petty was indisputably The King.
One other seven-time champion was Formulation 1 maestro Michael Schumacher. He loved a number of seasons of dominance within the sport – 11 wins from 17 in 2002 and 13 from 18 in 2004 are two excessive examples, however in each instances he was blessed with a Ferrari that was quantifiably higher than the closest opposition. We all know this as a result of his teammate Rubens Barrichello pounded the likes of Juan Pablo Montoya, Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso to say second in factors.
However the season that left us in little question that Schumacher was head and shoulders above his rivals got here far earlier – 1995 and his last marketing campaign with Benetton. That 12 months, with one of the best engine of the time, the Renault V10, however with a B195 chassis not on par with Adrian Newey’s identically-powered Williams FW17, he made Damon Hill (world champion the next 12 months!) and David Coulthard look remarkably odd. Between them, the Britons earned 12 pole positions to Schumacher’s 4, but by way of race wins, they had been overwhelmed 5-9 by the German meister. Sure, Benetton’s strategists had been superior to their Williams counterparts for many of the season, however as Ross Brawn identified frequently, it was Schuey’s relentless race tempo that enabled the staff to show gambles into surefire profitable techniques.
“Relentless” could be an apt method to describe Jimmy Clark’s Indy 500 efficiency in 1965. After an oil-foiled first try at breaking the roadsters’ dominance on the Brickyard along with his rear-engine Lotus-Ford “humorous automobile” in ’63, and a rubber-stymied second attempt that resulted in a DNF earlier than quarter distance in ’64, Clark, Chapman and Lotus nailed down the lid on the front-engine Indy automobile ethos in ’65. A.J. Foyt beat everybody to pole in a one-year-old Lotus 34, however failed to hassle Clark’s Lotus 38 after Lap 3, and the standard Scot led 190 of the 200 laps and gained by two minutes over Parnelli Jones – all at a record-breaking common velocity.
Tales resembling this, together with studies from Historic Sportscar Racing occasions at Daytona and Sebring, and the Taupo Historic Grand Prix in New Zealand make this an unmissable situation of Classic Motorsport.
The February/March 2025 situation of Classic Motorsport is now mailing to subscribers and is already out there to learn in digital format. We hope you get pleasure from it. Single copies might be bought at our on-line retailer HERE Classic Motorsport journal can be out there at Barnes & Noble bookstores nationwide.
