That Was The Week That Was – Anniversaries And Milestones From Motorsport's Past

April 25

1974: Mario Andretti took his only win for Alfa Romeo in the World Sportscar Championship. Sharing a works T33TT12 with Arturo Merzario, the American led an Alfa 1-2-3 in the Monza 1000km, ahead of the sister cars of Jacky Ickx/Rolf Stommelen and Carlo Facetti/Andrea de Adamich.

1981: Happy 35^th birthday to Williams F1 racer Felipe Massa. The Brazilian has, to date, contested 232 Grands Prix for Sauber, Ferrari and Williams, winning 11 of them for Ferrari and coming within a few seconds of the 2008 Drivers’ title.

1982: The infamous San Marino GP at Imola produced a one-two for Ferrari, courtesy of Didier Pironi and Gilles Villeneuve. French-Canadian Villeneuve fell out with Pironi over a team-orders agreement and, as fate would have it, never spoke to his team-mate again; he was killed in qualifying for the next race in Belgium two weeks later. Michele Alboreto took his maiden podium finish for Tyrrell.

2001: Nineteen years to the day after that breakthrough result in F1, popular Italian Alboreto was killed while testing an Audi R8 sportscar car at the Lausitzring in Germany. The 44-year-old had won five GPs – two for Tyrrell and three for Ferrari – between 1982 and 1985, as well as the 1997 Le Mans 24 Hours for Porsche and the 2001 Sebring 12 Hours for Audi.

April 26

1958: John Colum Crichton-Stuart, 7^th Marquess of Bute, was born. Better known in racing circles as Johnny Dumfries, he won the British Formula 3 title in 1984 and, via F3000, graduated to F1 with Lotus in 1986. Team-mate to Ayrton Senna, he was on a hiding to nothing. His best result in the JPS Renault-powered 98T was fifth in the Hungarian GP, from an F1 career best of eighth on the grid. He went on to race for Jaguar in the World Sportscar Championship, winning the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1988 with Jan Lammers and Andy Wallace.

1964: Colin Davis became only the second British driver to win the Sicilian Targa Florio road race. He added his name to that of 1912 winner Cyril Snipe by partnering Antonio Pucci to victory in a Porsche 904 GTS.

1989: Frenchman Didier Auriol’s second career WRC win was his first in a four-wheel-drive car. Winner in Corsica in 1988 in a rear-drive Ford Sierra Cosworth, he won again on the island, this time in a Lancia Delta Integrale. He beat the BMW M3 of fellow Frenchman François Chatriot.

1992: Toyota took its first and only World Sportscar Championship win when Geoff Lees and Hitoshi Ogawa won the Monza 500km in the Team Tom’s TS010 Group C car. Tragically, 36-year-old Ogawa was killed in a Japanese F3000 race at Suzuka less than a month later.

1994: Red Bull F1 racer Daniil Kvyat was born. The Russian is in his second season with the former World Champion team, having made his debut with Scuderia Toro Rosso in 2014. His best result, to date, has been second in last season’s Hungarian GP.

April 27

1943: Former Grand Prix driver and Le Mans winner Helmut Marko was born. The Austrian, who now works closely with Red Bull Racing owner Dietrich Mateschitz, raced in nine GPs for BRM in 1971 and 1972, but was forced to retire after losing the sight in one eye after a stone pierced his visor during the ’72 French GP. His best result had been eighth at Monaco that year. His real claim to fame was winning Le Mans alongside Gijs van Lennep in a Martini Porsche 917 in 1971.

1952: Happy 64^th birthday to Ari Vatanen, one of the greatest rally drivers and motorsport personalities of all time. The flying Finn contested 101 WRC events, for Opel, Ford, Peugeot, Subaru, BMW and Mitsubishi between 1974 and 2003, winning 10 events and the 1981 World Championship in the Rothmans Ford Escort RS1800.

1975: The shortened Spanish GP, the last on Barcelona’s Montjuich Park street circuit, was won by McLaren driver and Goodwood House Captain Jochen Mass, ahead of his future Porsche sportscar team-mate Jacky Ickx. The race also marked the only occasion a woman got on the score sheet in the World Championship, thanks to Italian Lella Lombardi’s sixth place in a March 751. Of far greater consequence, however, was the accident that befell Rolf Stommelen. The German’s Embassy Hill GH1 crashed violently on lap 25, killing several bystanders.

1980: Privateer Alain de Cadenet and Desiré Wilson won the Monza 1,000km in the Briton’s self-run, Lola-built De Cadenet-Cosworth. South African Wilson became only the second woman, after Lella Lombardi, to win in the series. The duo would repeat the feat in the next round, at Silverstone, two weeks later.

2008: Jordan held its first World Rally Championship qualifier with Finn Mikko Hirvonen winning in a Ford Focus RS WRC from the Citroen C4 WRC of Dani Sordo and Chris Atkinson’s Subaru Impreza WRC. The Arab Kingdom appeared on the calendar twice more, in 2010 and 2011, won by Sebastien Loeb and Sebastien Ogier respectively.

April 28

1974: Niki Lauda became an F1 winner for the first time thanks to victory for Ferrari in the Spanish GP at Jarama. It was the Scuderia’s 50^th win in the World Championship.

1996: With victory for Williams in the European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, Jacques Villeneuve added his name to the history books alongside his late father Gilles. He would come close to the title in what was his maiden season in F1, losing out to team-mate Damon Hill, but going one better in 1997.

April 29

1951: NASCAR hero Dale Earnhardt was born. He would win 76 top-class races, which puts him eighth on the all-time list, and seven drivers’ titles. He died, aged 49, in an accident on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.

1984: Belgian circuit Zolder held its last World Championship Grand Prix, won by Michele Alboreto’s Ferrari, from the Renault of Derek Warwick and the second Ferrari of René Arnoux. Zolder held 10 races in total and is sadly remembered as the place where Gilles Villeneuve was killed – during qualifying for the 1982 race.

April 30

1920: British racer Duncan Hamilton was born in Ireland. He famously won the 1953 Le Mans 24 Hours in a Jaguar C-type, sharing with Tony Rolt, and finished second a year later, in the D-type. He also contested five GPs – two for Talbot-Lago and three for HWM – between 1951 and 1953. He died, aged 74, in 1994.

1994: Roland Ratzenberger became the first driver for 12 years to lose his life during a Grand Prix weekend when front-wing failure pitched him off at sickening speed during qualifying for the San Marino GP at Imola. The 33-year-old Austrian was in his first season at the top level of the sport, having raced extensively in single-seaters, sportscars and touring cars, before realising a lifelong dream.

May 1

1955: British duo Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson took a dominant victory in the daunting Italian Mille Miglia road race, the third round of the World Sportscar Championship. Their Mercedes-Benz 300SLR averaged a shade under 100mph for the 10-hour blast over public roads and defeated the sister car of solo driver Juan Manuel Fangio by more than half an hour.

1967: Mirage’s first of two World Sportscar Championship wins came in the Spa 1,000kms, when the Ford-powered J.W. Automotive Mk1 of Jacky Ickx and Richard Thompson vanquished the Porsche 910 of Jo Siffert and Hans Herrmann to the tune of a whole lap.

1994: Rather like April 7, 1968, the occasion of Jim Clark’s death, this is a date etched in the memory of motorsport fans all over the world. Three-time World Champion Ayrton Senna was leading his third race for Williams – the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola – having started from pole when he hit the wall on the outside of the flat-out Tamburello corner. The death of the greatest driver of his generation, aged 34, rocked the sport and from that moment on the focus on increasing safety standards intensified. As with Clark, the reaction to Senna’s death was, ‘if it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone…’

2005: The first MotoGP race held in China was won by Valentino Rossi’s Yamaha. The Italian finished 1.7 seconds ahead of Frenchman Olivier Jacque, who took what would be his only MotoGP podium for Kawasaki. The race at the F1 circuit of Shanghai only ran three more times, in 2006, ’07 and ’08.