That Was The Week That Was – Anniversaries and Milestones From Motorsport’s Past

October 10

1923: Happy 93^rd birthday to motorsport’s best-loved broadcaster Murray Walker, a man whose pants-on-fire enthusiasm endeared him to millions of F1 fans for decades.

1976: McLaren star James Hunt won the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen to close the points gap to Ferrari rival Niki Lauda, who could only manage third. Between them was the Tyrrell of Jody Scheckter.

1981: Michèle Mouton became the first woman to win a round of the World Rally Championship when she took her Audi Quattro to victory in Sanremo. Co-driven by Fabrizia Pons, Mouton defeated the Talbot Sunbeam Lotus of Henri Toivonen and Fred Gallagher by 3m25s.  

1998: The inaugural American Le Mans Series race took place at Road Atlanta. The 10-hour ‘Petit Le Mans’ was won by the Doyle-Risi Racing Ferrari 333SP of Eric van de Poele, Wayne Taylor and Emmanuel Collard.

October 11

1956: Veteran WRC co-driver Derek Ringer was born. He contested 74 rallies between 1987 and 2008, most of them alongside Colin McRae. Together the Scottish duo won eight times for Subaru and famously landed the World Championship in 1995, the first Brits to do so.

1959: Australian 500cc hero Wayne Gardner was born. He won 18 Grands Prix for Honda between 1986 and 1992, securing the title in 1987. He’s also the most successful competitor at the Goodwood Revival with 13 wins in the Lennox Cup/Barry Sheene Memorial Trophy motorcycle race between 2002 and 2009.

1987: Norwegian WRC ace Mads Ostberg was born. The recent Tour de Corse rally, in which he finished ninth in an M-Sport Ford Fiesta RS WRC, was his 100 WRC start. He has one win to his name – in Portugal in 2012, also in a Fiesta. 

October 12

1986: Gerhard Berger and Benetton took their first F1 victory in the Mexican GP. The Austrian’s BMW turbo-powered B186 started from fourth on the grid and assumed control in the second half of the race. Runner-up, almost half a minute behind, was McLaren’s Alain Prost. Polesitter Ayrton Senna finished third for Lotus.

2003: Eighth place in the Japanese GP was enough to give Ferrari’s main man Michael Schumacher a record sixth F1 Drivers’ World Championship, eclipsing Argentinian legend Juan Manuel Fangio’s tally from the 1950s. The race was won by Schumacher’s team-mate Rubens Barrichello.

2008: Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes secured their third consecutive Bathurst 1,000 victory in the Triple Eight Ford Falcon. It had been almost a quarter of a century since a crew had done the treble – not since 1984, in fact, when Holden heroes Peter Brock and Larry Perkins made it three in a row in the Australian tin-top classic.

October 13

1973: Jean-Luc Thérier claimed victory in the inaugural WRC-qualifying Sanremo Rally. The Frenchman, co-driven by countryman Jacques Jaubert, took his Renault-Alpine A110 to a six-minute win over the Fiat 124 Abarth Spider of Maurizio Verini. Jean-Pierre Nicolas took third in another Alpine A110.

1996: Damon Hill won the Japanese GP at Suzuka to become the first son of a World Champion to also claim the title. The Williams ace’s eighth win of the year meant he joined his double champion father Graham in motorsport’s elite league. Second at Suzuka, just 1.8 seconds behind, was Hill’s nemesis Michael Schumacher in the Ferrari.  

October 14

1909: Pre-war Grand Prix ace Bernd Rosemeyer was born. The German, who married record-breaking aviator EllyBeinhorn, won the 1936 European Championship for Auto Union. He was killed attempting a speed record on a German autobahn in January 1938, aged just 28.

1968: British touring car king Jason Plato was born. The series’ most successful driver – he’s on 95 wins to date, some 35 ahead of the next man – started in single-seaters but made the move to the BTCC, via title glory in the Renault Spider Championship – in 1996. He’s raced for Renault, Vauxhall, SEAT, Chevrolet, MG, Volkswagen and Subaru – winning races for all of them.

October 15

1983: Nelson Piquet secured his second F1 World championship crown for Brabham after finishing third in the season-closing South African GP at Kyalami. The race was won by Piquet’s team-mate Riccardo Patrese in the second BT52B-BMW. Second went to the Alfa Romeo of Andrea de Cesaris, the Italian matching his career-best finish in the German GP earlier in the year.

1987: Estonian WRC front-runner Ott Tanak was born. He made his debut in a Group N Subaru Impreza in 2009 and has been in WRC-spec machinery since the end of 2011. His best result to date is second on this year’s Rally Poland in a Ford Fiesta RS WRC.

1997: Land Speed Record holder Andy Green, who a few weeks earlier achieved 714.144mph in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada aboard Thrust SSC, became the first man to break the speed of sound in a wheeled vehicle. He increased the record to 763.035mph in the supersonic machine and is now working with previous record holder Richard Noble to eclipse 1000mph with the Bloodhound SSC machine.

October 16

1918: War hero and successful racer Tony Rolt was born. He contested three World Championship GPs – all at Silverstone – but is best-known for his Le Mans win with Jaguar. He won the French enduro in 1953 in a C-type with Duncan Hamilton to become the first crew to average 100mph around the Circuit de la Sarthe.

1955: Stirling Moss completed the sportscar treble for the season by adding victory in the Targa Florio to his Mille Miglia and Tourist Trophy wins in the Mercedes 300 SLR. Moss was paired with fellow Brit Peter Collins and they finished four-and-a-half minutes ahead of the second 300 SLR of Juan Manuel Fangio and Karl Kling.

1985: Australian MotoGP ace Casey Stoner was born. He won 38 races for Ducati and Honda and took the 2007 and 2011 titles. He retired at the end of 2012 and spent a year in V8 Supercars before returning to MotoGP testing duties for Ducati.

2011: British IndyCar top name Dan Wheldon was killed in a multi-car pile-up in the early laps of the season-closing Las Vegas race. The 33-year-old, who won the IndyCar crown in 2005, had won the Indy 500 for a second time earlier that year.