That Was The Week That Was: Anniversaries and Milestones From Motorsport's Past

August 8

1953: Happy 63^rd birthday, Nigel Ernest James Mansell! In case you’ve forgotten the numbers, he raced in 187 Grands Prix for Lotus, Williams, Ferrari and McLaren, winning 31 of them. He also racked up 32 poles, 30 fastest laps and 482 championship points. He became Britain’s seventh Formula 1 World Champion in 1992 and then went off to America to win the CART IndyCar title at his first attempt.  

1973: Andy Priaulx was born. The former British Hillclimb champion switched to cars and went on to lift three World Touring Car Championships for BMW. After many years with the German marque, for which he competed in touring cars and sportscars all over the world, he joined Ford’s GTE team for its 2016 return to top-level endurance racing.

1982: Patrick Tambay took an emotional maiden F1 win in the German GP at Hockenheim. The Frenchman’s 126C2 was the sole Ferrari in the race after team leader Didier Pironi had been gravely injured in a qualifying shunt the day before. The Renault of René Arnoux finished second, 16 seconds adrift.

1993: Subaru’s first World Rally Championship win came in New Zealand, courtesy of Colin McRae. The Scot took the Prodrive-run Legacy RS to a 27-second win over the Ford Escort RS Cosworth of François Delecour for his maiden WRC success.

August 9

1944: Patrick Depailler was born. The Frenchman contested 95 GPs between 1972 and 180, winning twice – at Monaco in 1978 for Tyrrell and Spain a year later for Ligier. He also won the European F2 title in a works March in 1974. He was killed, aged 35, in a testing crash in an Alfa Romeo at Hockenheim on August 1, 1980.

1963: Double British Touring Car champion Alain Menu was born. The Swiss ace won 36 races for Renault and Ford and lifted the title in 1997 in a Williams-run Laguna and 2000 in a Prodrive-built Mondeo.

1975: US ace Mark Donohue set a closed-course speed record of 221.120mph at NASCAR’s Talladega Speedway in the Porsche 917/30 with which he’d dominated the 1973 Can-Am championship.

1986: Miki Biasion won Rally Argentina for Lancia. It was the Italian’s only victory in the Group B Delta S4. He’d go on to win back-to-back titles in the Group A version of the Delta in 1988-’99.

August 10

1969: Porsche’s 917 prototype took its first World Sportscar Championship victory, thanks to the efforts of Kurt Ahrens and Jo Siffert in the season-finale Osterreichring 1,000km. They finished ahead of the Lola T70 MkIIIB of Jo Bonnier and Herbie Muller by almost two minutes, with another 917, the Richard Attwood/Brian Redman car, in third.

1986: The inaugural Eastern-bloc Grand Prix took place in Hungary, won by the Williams-Honda of Nelson Piquet. The Brazilian passed the Lotus of countryman Ayrton Senna in a superb, oversteery move, to lead and went on to beat his nemesis by 17s. Piquet’s team-mate Nigel Mansell was third, a lap adrift.

1997: Reigning World Champion Damon Hill came within a lap of a remarkable win in Hungary for Arrows. His Yamaha-powered A18 led from lap 30 until the penultimate tour, lap 76, when the Briton was forced to slow with a problem. He lost the lead to Jacques Villeneuve’s Williams but hung on to second, nine seconds further back.    

August 11

1957: Jean Behra and Stirling Moss took victory for Maserati in the second and final World Sportscar Championship race to be held at the Swedish circuit of Kristianstad. Their 450S defeated the Ferrari 335 Sport of Phil Hill and Peter Collins by a lap.

1984: Brazilian Lucas di Grassi was born. The former Macau F3 GP and GP2 race winner raced for the new Virgin team in F1 in 2010 and went on to join Audi’s World Endurance Championship squad, finishing runner-up at Le Mans in 2014. He won the Spa 6 Hours WEC qualifier earlier this year and recently finished second in year two of the FIA Formula E Championship.  

1985: Derek Bell and Hans-Joachim Stuck won the final World Sportscar Championship race at Canadian venue Mosport for the Rothmans Porsche team. Their 962C beat the sister car of Jacky Ickx and Jochen Mass, with the Jaguar XJR-6 of Martin Brundle/Jean-Louis Schlesser/Mike Thackwell taking third on the TWR-run car’s debut. The event was marred by the accident that befell Manfred Winkelhock. The German’s Kremer Porsche crashed heavily, with the 32-year-old succumbing to his injuries the following day.

1991: The Hungarian GP was won by Ayrton Senna’s McLaren, with fastest lap going to a Jordan for the first time. Belgian driver Bertrand Gachot notched up the milestone on his way to ninth place, but within days found himself in jail for a CS gas assault on a taxi driver in London. His place in the British team at the next round in Belgium was taken by young German debutant Michael Schumacher…

August 12

1933: American racing god Rufus Parnell ‘Parnelli’ Jones was born. He won the 1963 Indianapolis 500 in a Watson Offenhauser and took two more wins as a team owner, with Al Unser Sr, in 1970 and ’71. He also tackled F1 in the mid-1970s with the eponymous Parnelli VP34 and 34B. Even with Mario Andretti on the driving strength, success eluded Jones and he disbanded the team after two races in 1976.

1979: Alan Jones made it two in a row for Williams, with victory in the Austrian GP at the Osterreichring. The Australian’s FW07 led home the Ferrari of Gilles Villeneuve by more than half a minute.

August 13

1946: Lady racer Divina Galica was born. The former British Women’s Olympic ski team captain made three attempts to qualify in F1 – in a Surtees for the British GP at Brands Hatch in 1976 and aboard a Hesketh in Argentina and Brazil in 1978, all to no avail.

1978: Superswede Ronnie Peterson took his 10^th and last F1 win in Austria. His Lotus 79 beat the Tyrrell 008 of Patrick Depailler and the Ferrari 312T3 of podium debutant Gilles Villeneuve.

1982: Michele Mouton’s fourth and final WRC win for Audi came in the series’ second and final visit to Brazil. Co-driven by Fabrizia Pons, she headed the Opel Ascona of Walter Röhrl by 35 minutes.

1989: Nigel Mansell took his second win of 1989 for Ferrari with that move on Ayrton Senna as they came up to lap the Onyx of Stefan Johansson during the Hungarian GP. Third went to the Williams of Thierry Boutsen.

August 14

1942: Happy 74^th birthday to former Grand Prix driver/team boss, Le Mans winner and Can-Am champion Jackie Oliver! He raced in 48 GPs for Lotus, BRM, McLaren and Shadow, with a best result of third – for Lotus in Mexico in 1968 and Shadow in Canada in ’73. His Le Mans win came with Ford in 1969 alongside Jacky Ickx and he won the last proper Can-Am title in 1974 with Shadow. He went on to co-create the Arrows F1 team in 1978 (he is the O of Arrows) and remained in the board of directors until selling his final shares in 1999.

1960: The Portuguese GP on the Porto road course was won by reigning World Champion Jack Brabham, his Cooper beating the sister car of Bruce McLaren. Bike racing ace John Surtees, who’d switched to four wheels, took his maiden pole and fastest lap, while fellow Brit Jim Clark secured his first career podium finish with third.

1977: Alan Jones gave Shadow what would be its only F1 win with his maiden victory in Austria. His DN8 finished 20s ahead of Niki Lauda’s Ferrari, with the Brabham-Alfa Romeo of Hans-Joachim Stuck in third.

1988: Enzo Anselmo Ferrari, a former racing driver who founded his own team and became the most famous sportscar manufacturer in the world, died, aged 90. Just  a few weeks after his death, his beloved red cars took an historic one-two in the Italian GP at Monza – Scuderia Ferrari’s home race.