That Was The Week That Was: Anniversaries And Milestones From Motorsport’s Past

June 20

1952: Grand Prix driver Luigi Fagioli was killed, aged 54, during a sportscar race in a Lancia on the streets of Monaco. The Italian won the French GP the year before, sharing an Alfa Romeo 159 with Juan Manuel Fangio, and is still the oldest winner of a World Championship Grand Prix.

1965: Ferrari secured its ninth and, to date, last Le Mans 24 Hours win when Jochen Rindt and Masten Gregory took their North American Racing Team 250LM to victory. The Austro-American duo beat the similar car of French privateer Pierre Dumay and his Belgian co-driver Gustave Gosselin.

1982: Porsche’s Group C great, the 956, took Le Mans victory with Derek Bell and Jacky Ickx to kickstart a six-year rout for the machine and its 962 upgrade. Bell and Ickx, who won in 1975 for Mirage and ’81 in Porsche’s open-top 936, led a factory Rothmans 956 1-2-3, ahead of Jochen Mass/Vern Schuppan and Jürgen Barth/Hurley Haywood/Al Holbert. 

June 21

1945: South African rally co-driver Stuart Pegg was born. He may have only contested five WRC events, but he achieved legendary status by guiding Roger Clark to victory in the 1976 Lombard RAC Rally aboard the Cossack hairspray Ford Escort RS1800 – which happened to be his top-level debut!

1970: British racer Piers Courage was killed in the Dutch GP at Zandvoort. The 28-year-old was in his fourth race for the Frank Williams-run De Tomaso squad when tragedy struck. His best results had been a pair of second places – at Monaco and Watkins Glen – in a Brabham during 1969.

1981: The Jarama circuit outside Madrid held its ninth and last Spanish Grand Prix. The race, round seven on that year’s F1 calendar, also marked Gilles Villeneuve’s sixth and final win for Ferrari. The French-Canadian hero held off a train comprising Jacques Laffite’s Ligier, John Watson’s McLaren, Carlos Reutemann’s Williams and Elio de Angelis’s Lotus to make it two in a row – and rack up Ferrari’s first two wins with a turbo car.

1987: Ayrton Senna gave Lotus its 79th and final win (unless you count Kimi Raikkonen’s two ‘Lotus’ victories in 2012/2013, which you shouldn’t really!) on the streets of Detroit. The Brazilian’s Honda-powered 99T beat the Williams FW11B of Nelson Piquet by 33 seconds to take the championship lead, ahead of McLaren’s Alain Prost, who finished third.

1992: Peugeot’s first Le Mans win came courtesy of Brits Mark Blundell and Derek Warwick and Frenchman Yannick Dalmas. Their 3.5-litre V10 905B beat the Toyota TS010 of Kenny Acheson/Pierre-Henri Raphanel/Masanori Sekiya by six laps. The sister car of Philippe Alliot/Mauro Baldi/Jean-Pierre Jabouille, which had started on pole, finished third.

June 22

1943: Finnish rally hero Simo Lampinen was born. One of the original ‘flying Finns’, he won his home event, the 1000 Lakes Rally, in 1963, ’64 and ’72, and the RAC Rally in 1968 – all for Saab.

1975: James Hunt secured his and the tiny Hesketh team’s maiden F1 win – in the Dutch GP at Zandvoort. Hunt held off Niki Lauda’s Ferrari to take the historic victory, Hesketh’s only success at the top level.

1978: IndyCar hero Dan Wheldon was born. He took 16 series wins between 2004 and 2011, including two Indianapolis 500 wins. He also won the Daytona 24 Hours in 2006. Wheldon was killed in the 2011 IndyCar season finale at Las Vegas, aged 33.

1989: Volkswagen WRC star Andreas Mikkelsen was born. The Norwegian has contested 70 events since 2006, in Ford, Subaru, Skoda machinary and, since 2013, VW. He first win came in Catalunya in 2015. 

1997: Briton Mark Blundell took his first IndyCar win in a blanket finish on the Portland road course. His PacWest Reynard-Mercedes held off the Walker Racing Reynard-Honda of Brazilian Gil de Ferran by 0.027s.

June 23

1968: Jackie Stewart’s victory in the Dutch GP at Zandvoort marked the first F1 win for the French Matra team. Stewart’s Cosworth DFV-engined MS10 beat the Matra V12-engined MS11 of Jean-Pierre Beltoise by almost a lap. The BRM of Pedro Rodriguez was third.

1991: Mazda became the first and, to date, only Japanese marque to win Le Mans. The rotary-engined 787B of Johnny Herbert/Bertrand Gachot and Volker Weidler took a two-lap victory over the Jaguar XJR-12 of Raul Boesel/Michel Ferté/Davy Jones.   

June 24

1911: The great Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio was born. He came to Europe in the late-1940s and quickly gained a reputation and results tally that would make him one of the all-time greats. He won 24 of the 51 GPs he started between 1950 and ’58 and won the Drivers’ Championship title on five occasions, for Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Mercedes and Lancia-Ferrari. He died, aged 84, in 1995.

1951: Jaguar took the first of its seven Le Mans wins. The works C-type of Peters Walker and Whitehead took a nine-lap win over the Talbot-Lago T26GS of Pierre Meyret and Guy Mairesse.  

June 25

1939: British pre-war racing hero Dick Seaman died during the Belgian GP at Spa-Francorchamps. He raced for the factory Mercedes-Benz team from 1937 to ’39, winning the 1938 German GP at the Nürburgring Nordschleife.

1949: French F1 driver Patrick Tambay was born. He raced in 114 GPs for Ensign, McLaren, Theodore, Ligier, Ferrari, Renault and Lola between 1977 and 1986, winning for the Scuderia in the German GP at Hockenheim in 1982 and the San Marino GP at Imola in 1983.

1964: Grand Prix veteran Johnny Herbert was born. The Essex boy made his debut in 1989 and started a total of 160 races for Benetton, Tyrrell, Lotus, Ligier, Sauber, Stewart and Jaguar. He won three races – the British and Italian GPs in 1995 for Benetton and the ’99 European GP for Stewart. He also won Le Mans in 1991 for Mazda (see June 23).   

1978: Keke Rosberg won the Donington Park European Formula 2 qualifier in his Fred Opert Racing Chevron B42. The Finn took an overall aggregate win after winning heat one and finishing fourth in heat two. Italian Piero Necchi finished second in a March 782-BMW

June 26

1964: Finnish rallying king Tommi Mäkinen was born. He won the World Rally Championship four times consecutively for Mitsubishi between 1996 and 1999 and took a total of 24 career wins. He’s now masterminding Toyota’s factory return to the WRC for 2017.  

1971: Bike racer Max Biaggi was born. The Italian won four consecutive 250cc World titles and made his 500cc debut in 1998. He went on to win eight races for Honda and Yamaha and finish runner-up in the World Championship on three occasions. He switched to World Superbikes in 2007 and won the title in 2010 and 2012 for the factory Aprilia team.

1976: Barry Sheene took his fourth 500cc win of the season for Suzuki in the fifth round, the Dutch TT at Assen, scene of his maiden series win 12 months earlier. With a fifth win, in the Swedish GP at Anderstorp, later in the year, he lifted the world title – joining Les Graham, Geoff Duke, John Surtees, Mike Hailwood and Phil Read as a British winner.