Video: 'Full Throttle' Scheckter Streets Ahead At Monaco

The Ferrari 312T4s of Jody Scheckter and Gilles Villeneuve have locked out the front row, the South African securing his first pole position for the Scuderia. He had a share of the lead of the drivers’ championship with Ligier’s Jacques Laffite, having taken his first win of the year in Belgium two weeks earlier, so was out to get one over the Frenchman sitting fifth on the grid.

Honours between Ferrari and Ligier were even as the 76-lap race got under way, thanks to three victories each from the season’s first six races.

Scheckter, who’d won in Monaco two years earlier for the Canadian Wolf team, made the perfect getaway to lead into the first corner. And that was really the last of the rest of the field saw of the eight-time Grand Prix winner. He pulled out a comfortable lead, led by Niki Lauda’s Brabham, Villeneuve and, in the last quarter of the race, Clay Regazzoni’s Williams.

The Swiss veteran pulled out all the stops from 16^th on the grid and, aided by the attrition (only six cars would finish), closed right up on Scheckter. Ultimately, he fell short of giving Frank Williams a maiden F1 win by 0.4s. He’d only have to wait two more races to put that right. Third went to the Lotus of Carlos Reutemann, ahead of the best-place Brit: McLaren’s John Watson.

The race also marked the last appearance in F1 – at least in the cockpit – of James Hunt. The 1976 World Champion spent four laps in 12^th place, having qualified 10^th, before the car’s suspension failed. It was the Briton’s 92^nd Grand Prix and would it be less than a year before he returned to the paddock for 13 memorable years alongside Murray Walker in the BBC commentary box.

Settle back for 40 minutes of Murray on solo ‘full throttle’ as he excitedly calls the best bits of the 26th^th World Championship Monaco Grand Prix. And when you watch the 63^rd running of F1’s original wacky race on Sunday, you’ll appreciate anew just how little the place has changed.