[Race] The GROAT - Round 3 - 1957 Nürburgring vs 1975 Zandvoort

[crmalcolm]

We reach the first match in the third round.

1957 Nürburgring
Fangio had taken pole position in his Maserati 250F, with Mike Hawthorn in the Ferrari 801 alongside. Jean Behra (Maserati) and Peter Collins (Ferrari) completed the four-car front row. Fangio's pole time of 9 minutes 25.6 seconds was 2.8 seconds ahead of Hawthorn.

Come the race, Ferrari planned to not pit while Fangio decided upon a one-stop strategy on softer tyres. This didn't stop Hawthorn getting off the grid in the lead, ahead of teammate Collins and Fangio. Fangio took the lead on lap three and pitted, as planned, on lap 12, with a 30-second lead. However, this pit stop was disastrous; the left rear wheel nut became lost underneath the car and once it was found, Hawthorn and Collins had long gone past. Fangio emerged in third place, nearly 50 seconds behind the Ferrari pair.

Fangio started by taking 15.5 seconds off Hawthorn on his first lap and 8.5 the next. Setting not just fastest laps quicker than his qualifying time, but nine lap records, seven in succession, Fangio virtually drove the wheels off his Maserati in his chase. He caught with, and overtook, Collins early in the 21st lap and took the lead of Hawthorn later the same lap. Hawthorn challenged, but Fangio held firm to win the race, and his fifth World Championship title.

After the race, Fangio commented 'I have never driven that quickly before in my life and I don't think I will ever be able to do it again.' It would turn out to be somewhat accurate statement, as it was his final World Championship victory, and he retired in 1958.


1975 Zandvoort
Although Sunday had dawned bright and warm, continental showers soon gathered over the dunes, soaking the circuit shortly before the 2:15p.m. start time. The organisers were forced to cancel the morning warm-up at the peak of the downpour, although they did allow the drivers a ten minute session to tryout the conditions once the rain had stopped. Most drivers opted for dry tyres as a result, although a second downpour prompted a late switch to the wets as the field prepared to leave the grid for the parade lap.

With the circuit soaked there was little surprise when the two Ferraris on the front row spun up their rear wheels, allowing Jody Scheckter to get alongside them with two wheels skating along the grass. Momentum carried the South African racer past Clay Regazzoni, and would have taken him past Niki Lauda had the Austrian not suddenly found grip and shot away from the field. Regazzoni would find purchase too late and slipped to third, with the rest of the field enveloped in spray as they swept into Tarzan.

In the middle of the spray it seemed inevitable that someone would hit trouble, and so there was little surprise when two cars emerged out of the back of the cloud carrying damage. In the midst of the spray Patrick Depailler had misjudged turn in point and clobbered the left rear of Vittorio Brambilla, smashing the Italian's suspension and puncturing his own front right tyre. Brambilla was out on the spot, managing to reverse his ruined March backwards into the pits, while Depailler limped round to have his front tyre changed.

The rest of the field, meanwhile, would split into two during the opening tour, with Lauda leading an equally spaced top ten while Ronnie Peterson led the second pack from eleventh. The spray meant that most drivers were reluctant to run to close to the car ahead, although that did not stop the two Brabham boys from taking the out-of-form Emerson Fittipaldi towards the end of the lap. Another man rather ignoring the spray was Bob Evans, although that was because he was already fighting a rear-guard action in the BRM from Wilson Fittipaldi and Lella Lombardi at the back of the field.

The opening laps passed by far quicker than anyone expected, for the track was drying at an almost alarming rate. By lap five a distinct "dry-line" had emerged, prompting James Hunt to dive into the pits two laps later from fourth. A sub thirty-second stop from the Hesketh crew got the Brit back out on the drying circuit in nineteenth, with Jochen Mass the only man to follow him in on that tour.

It would take some time for Hunt and Mass' pace to be revealed on their slick tyres, although Carlos Reutemann would dive into the pits at the end of lap eight and ultimately emerge further behind both. This was the beginning of a trickle of drivers into the pits, with Emerson Fittipaldi, sweeping in at the end of the following lap. Jean-Pierre Jarier, John Watson and Wilson Fittipaldi were in next, as race leader Lauda began to drive off-line to keep his wet tyres cool.

At that time the wet and the dry tyres seemed to be evenly matched, for Emerson Fittipaldi had emerged just ahead of Hunt despite having trailed him by a few seconds before the Brit's stop. However, the Hesketh had now brought its tyres up to temperature, and with the circuit continuing to dry, the balance of pace soon tipped towards the slick shod minority. Hunt's move on Fittipaldi prompted a bigger flurry of activity in the pits at the end of lap eleven, leading to an unfortunate accident when the Ferrari team coordinator leapt into the path of Peterson's departing Lotus. The Ferrari man was pulled away from the scene and put into a medical tent with a broken leg, while Peterson's undamaged Lotus continued on after a brief check-up.

Lauda carried on until the thirteenth lap, leaving Regazzoni in the lead as one of the last stoppers. However, the damage had been done, for the Austrian would emerge behind Jarier's Shadow, which had moved ahead of Fittipaldi as attention focused Peterson's pitstop confusion. That meant that Hunt inherited the lead when Regazzoni dived into the pits, leaving Lauda without a rear-gunner as he attempted to regain the lead.

The race soon became a battle of the stopwatch, with Lauda slowly reeling in the two cars ahead as Hunt was gradually seeing Jarier grow closer in the mirrors. Intriguingly, Lauda's progress was not being made down the start/finish straight, where the V12 Ferrari engine was supposedly superior, but instead coming on the long sweeping run from Hondenvlak. The top three were by far the fastest trio on track, with a huge gap back to fourth placed Scheckter and the rest of the runners.

As the race out front steadily developed, the first reports of retirements were beginning to filter back to the pits. First out was Jacky Ickx, the Belgian just getting back to pits having lost his engine at the back of the circuit before the field had even begun to consider dry tyres. Evans was out with the BRM after a drive unit failure, while Mass was soon to drop with a jamming throttle in the second McLaren.

As the race thundered past half distance, Lauda could be seen on the back of Jarier's Shadow, and was attempting to use the most reliable overtaking manoeuvre at Zandvoort: A dive into Tarzan. Unfortunately for him, Jarier was a veteran F1 racer, and so knew exactly where to place his car when the Austrian tried to dive past him on the brakes into the tightening hairpin. Three failed attempts from Lauda resulted, before a better run through the final corner allowed him to elbow his way past the Shadow to start the 44th lap.

The Lauda/Jarier duel had briefly allowed Hunt to rebuild the eight second lead he had held after the final stops for slicks, although Lauda was soon carving his way into having cleared Jarier. Jarier himself had not allowed Lauda to simply disappear up the road, but the Shadow would only last another lap before a spectacular rear tyre failure pitched Jarier into a spin through Scheivlak. The Shadow was briefly stranded in the middle of the track before Jarier could drag it out of the firing line to retire.

The order was now Hunt leading from an charging Lauda, who quickly cut the gap in half, before a huge gap back to Scheckter and Regazzoni who were on the verge of duelling for third. Next came Reutemann, promoted after Fittipaldi retired with a ruined gearbox, although the Argentine was being pressed by an enthusiastic Peterson who was enjoying the less-than-perfect conditions. Tom Pryce was next in a lonely seventh, and worrying about his brakes, while Carlos Pace toured around without too much to shout about as the last man on the lead lap.

All eyes were on Hunt and Lauda as the latter drew ever closer to the back of the former, and on lap 57 the Austrian seemed to be in a position to pounce. However, before the #12 Ferrari could pounce, Hunt dived up the inside of Pryce to lap the Shadow, which moved across in front of Lauda to temporarily halt his charge. The pair were back together again in a matter of moments, but an identical move by Hunt when lapping the limping Mass two laps later kept the Austrian a frustrated second.

The two former Formula 3 rivals were now running nose to tail, with the Hesketh stubbornly remaining ahead of the scarlet Ferrari in spite of the latter's superior pace. Hunt was putting together one of the best defensive drives in years, placing his car perfectly while using the backmarkers strategically to block any move by Lauda with frightening reliability. As the race entered its final throes, it seemed as if the Austrian would never get past.

Ultimately, it was Hunt who would win the Dutch Grand Prix of 1975, the white Hesketh charging out of the final corner to the delight of the Hesketh team. Lauda was a second behind in second, while Regazzoni had moved into third when Scheckter suffered an engine failure two laps from home. Peterson was another late retiree having just moved into fourth, leaving Reutemann, Pace and Pryce as the final scorers, all a lap down.