Champions’ race to new Ferrari

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32562, 23 March 1971, Page 24

Champions’ race to new Ferrari

(N.Z.P. A. -Reuter—Copyright) BRANDS HATCH (England). The Swiss driver, C. Regazzoni, giving the new Ferrari 3128 its first outing, won the Race-of-Champions Formula One event by 23 seconds.

Regazzoni covered the 132,5-mile course in Ihr 13 min 35sec at an average speed of 108.4 miles an hour. J. Stewart, of Britain, in the new Tyrrell Ford, was second in Ihr I3min 58.6 sec, and fellow Briton J. Surtees was third, one lap behind, in his new Surtees TS9. Stewart, the 1969 world champion, established a big lead in the early stages, but then the 30-year-old Regazzoni began making his challenge, overtaking New Zealander D. Huime’s McLaren Ford as the damp, 2.65-mile grand prix circuit slowly dried out.

Regazzoni, who won last season’s Italian Grand Prix, forced his way through to the front half-way through the 50 laps and was never headed after that. Fastest lap G. Hill (Britain), the world champion in 1962 and 1968, recorded the fastest lap of the day at 110.03 miles an hour in the new Brabham 8T34, but his victory chances ended when he was forced to retire with a broken valve spring after 36 laps. The Lotus 568 gas turbine car driven by the Brazilian, E. Fittipaldi, retired in the thirty-eighth lap with a collapsed rear suspension. Fittipaldi’s Lotus, the world’s first jet-engined grand prix car, made a disappointing debut. It was not nearly as fast as it promised to be in practice, and the 23-year-old Brazilian was only lying twelfth when forced to abandon the race.

Only seven of th? original 15 starters finished.

The fourth place was in dispute until the very last lap, when the New Zealander, H. Ganley, in the latest BRM, was finally edged out by the Australian, T. Schenken, in a Brabham. The race did not count towards the world championship.