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

September 5

1959: Aston Martin clinched the World Sportscar Championship with victory in the RAC Tourist Trophy at Goodwood, courtesy of Stirling Moss, Carroll Shelby and Jack Fairman. Moss had started the race alongside Roy Salvadori in another DBR1, which caught fire in the pits, before jumping into ‘the spare’ and doing what he did best.

1965: Sir Jack Brabham’s youngest son David was born. Brabham Jr was British Formula 3 Champion in 1989 and graduated to F1 with the embers of the Brabham team in 1990. He also raced for Simtek in 1994 before going on to great success in sportscar racing, including a Le Mans 24 Hours victory for Peugeot in 2009.

1970: Grand Prix great and World Championship leader Jochen Rindt was killed during qualifying for the Italian GP at Monza. The Austrian won six races for Lotus and at the end of the year became the sport’s only posthumous World Champion.

1971: Peter Gethin won the closest GP in history – at Monza. The Briton’s BRM eclipsed the March of Ronnie Peterson by 0.01s to give him his only win at the top level. The first five cars across the line were covered by less than seven-tenths of a second!

September 6

1964: John Surtees won the Italian GP at Monza for Ferrari – becoming the first and only Briton to give the Scuderia a home win. Big John took pole, set the fastest lap of the race and beat the Cooper-Climax of Bruce McLaren by more than a minute. The second Ferrari of Lorenzo Bandini took third, a lap in arrears.

1938: British sportscar racer John Hindmarsh was killed testing a Hawker Hurricane over Brooklands, aged 30. Hindmarsh’s biggest win had come at Le Mans in 1935, sharing a Lagonda M45 Rapide with fellow Brit Louis Fontés.

September 7

1975: Swiss ace Clay Regazzoni took his second Italian GP win for Ferrari at Monza. Five years after winning in the 312B of 1970, ‘Regga’ took the 312T to a 16.6s victory over the McLaren of reigning World Champion Emerson Fittipaldi and his Ferrari team-mate Niki Lauda.

1986: Timo Salonen took his second straight win in the 1,000 Lakes, Finland’s World Rally Championship monster. The local ace and reigning World Champion, partnered by Seppo Harjanne, took his Peugeot 205 T16 E2 to a 24-second victory over the sister car of Juha Kankkunen. Four-time winner Markku Alén completed the podium in the Martini Lancia Delta S4.

September 8

1956: Swedish ace Stefan Johansson was born. A former British F3 Champion, he graduated to F1 in 1983 with Spirit. In all, he contested 79 GPs, also racing for Tyrrell, Toleman, Ferrari, McLaren, Ligier, Onyx and Footwork. His best result was a quartet of second places – two for Ferrari in 1985 and two for McLaren in 1987. He also won the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1997, sharing a Porsche with Michele Alboreto and Tom Kristensen.

1991: Nigel Mansell won the Italian GP for Williams, the first Brit to win at Monza for 20 years. Michael Schumacher made his second start in F1, this time freshly ensconced at Benetton. He outqualified and outraced his illustrious team-mate, triple World Champion and four-time race winner Nelson Piquet, to finish fifth.

2006: Australia’s motorsport folk hero Peter Brock was killed in a crash on the Targa West Rally near Perth. The nine-time Bathurst 1,000 winner was driving a Daytona Cobra Coupé replica and hit a tree on the second stage of the event. Co-driver Mick Hone survived the crash. Just days before Brock had competed at the Goodwood Revival aboard a Holden FX in the St Mary’s Trophy and a Corvette Stingray in the RAC TT Celebration.   

September 9

1973: Jackie Stewart staged an epic comeback to finish fourth in the Italian GP at Monza to clinch his third World Championship title. The Tyrrell driver lost a minute to have a punctured tyre changed and charged back up from 20^th. The race was won by the polesitting Lotus 72 of Ronnie Peterson, who pipped team-mate Emerson Fittipaldi by 0.8s. Third went to the McLaren M23 of American Peter Revson.

1979: Ferrari took a one-two in the Italian GP at Monza, courtesy of Jody Scheckter and Gilles Villeneuve and the 312T4s. Scheckter’s win meant he sealed the drivers’ title with two races to spare. It would be 21 years before a Ferrari driver won another crown.

September 10

1961: Tragedy rocked the Italian GP at Monza when Ferrari’s World Championship hopeful Wolfgang von Trips was killed, along with a number of spectators, on lap two of the race. Eventual winner Phil Hill, von Trips’ team-mate, became America’s first World Champion thanks to victory over the Porsche of Dan Gurney.

1989: McLaren ace Alain Prost enraged team boss Ron Dennis after dropping his Italian GP winner’s trophy from the podium to the Ferrari fans below. It’s long been a McLaren tradition that trophies stay with the team, drivers receiving a replica later on. The Frenchman was joining the Scuderia for 1990 so felt he ought to ingratiate himself with the Monza crowd, particularly as he’d beaten Ferrari driver Gerhard Berger in the race!

2000: Carlos Sainz won the inaugural WRC-qualifying Cyprus Rally. The Spaniard beat Colin McRae by 37s to make it an M-Sport Ford Focus WRC one-two. Third place went to the Peugeot 206 WRC of François Delecour.

September 11

1950: British motorcycle king Barry Sheene was born. The Londoner won 19 500cc Grands Prix between 1975 and 1981 and clinched the 1976 and 1977 World Championship crowns for Suzuki. He died of cancer, aged just 52, in March 2003. The Goodwood Revival’s Lennox Cup motorcycle race, which Barry won on several occasions, was renamed in his honour later that year and continues to be a highlight of the event.

1978: SuperSwede Ronnie Peterson died after complications surrounding the leg injuries he suffered in a multiple-car shunt at the start of the Italian GP at Monza the day before. The Lotus ace was 34. He had competed in 123 GPs for March, Lotus and Tyrrell since 1970, winning 10 times and twice finishing runner-up in the World Championship.  

1988: The McLaren team was beaten for the first time in 12 races when Ayrton Senna tangled with the Williams of F1 debutant Jean-Louis Schlesser while on course for victory in the Italian GP at Monza. Senna’s plight (team-mate Alain Prost had already retired with a rare Honda engine failure) meant Ferrari took an historic one-two on home soil with Gerhard Berger and Michele Alboreto. Third and fourth went to the Arrows-Megatrons of Edie Cheever and Derek Warwick.