PAGE 10 AUTOWEEK SEPTEMBER 25, 1976

SuperSwede Wins Italian GP

By Pete Lyons
MONZA, Italy-The 47th Gran Premio
Nazionale d'Italia was a very long event,
three days long, but just when it was
getting endles s there was a r estful little
pause and we had the Italian Grand Prix.
It was a nice short , sha rp, eventful motor
race and it was worth all the trouble of
waiting for it.
Politics, if you' ve been paying attention
so far this year, are running wild in
Formula One and the last round of the
European season was a real laugh riot.
Over the summerful of increasingly
bitter controversies there has grown up
high feeling between the Italian Side and
the English Side, and it was certainly too
much hope that it wouldn't all come to a
head at Monza,
But that race, that great period between
3:30 and 5pm on Sunday afternoon, was
wonderful. It started off with Jacques
Laffite on Pole in his ' Gitanes Ligier-
Matra, which was a testimony to the basic
soundness of the rather small French
team' s effort quite as much as to the fact
that Laffite had been testing at Monza the
week before, and was thus more ready
than some to take advantage of the single
dry hour of practice that was granted by
the Po River Valley weather. .
Laffite got a good start and directly
behind him, third fastest qualifier, so. did
Carlos Pace (his Martini Brabham-Alfa
nearly a second quicker than the Ferrari
of his ex-teammate Carlos Reutemann).
The two twelves arrived into the First Ronnie Peterson found his way to the winner's circle aUhe ItalianGP after one of his drier seasons. Here he powers his oversteering March 761 olit of a corner
Chicane together, but then Jody Scheck- h T II P34 f J d S h kt d Pt ' k 0 ' 11
tel', who had been a close second best on ahead of t e yrre so 0 y cec er an a riC epa. er. Chris Mullen Photos
the grid, overtook them both under the
Y
ellow flag and led the lap), The Elf DRIVING CH.AMPIONSHIP, SEPTEMBER 12. 1976
RESULTS
Tyrell-Ford stayed in front for the first 10 I.Ronnie Peterson, March. 52 laps or 186.784 miles in
laps, but then Ronnie Peterson, who had 1:30:35.6 for an average speed of 124.l04mph; 2Clay Regazzoni.
started eighth, put his March-Ford ahead Ferrari. 52; 3-Jacques lafitte.ligier. 52; 4Niki lauda. Ferrari, 52;
and there for the rest of the race he 5-Jody Scheckler. Tyrrell .. 52; 6-Patrick Depailler. Tyrrell. 52; 7
Vittorio Brambilla. March. 52; 8-Tom Pryce. Shadow. 52; 9-Carlos
managed to stay. , Reutemann. Ferrari. 52; lO-Jacky Ich, Ensign. 52: ll-John
"For a while there we had three drivers Penske. 52: l2: A!an J!)nes, Surtees, 51: 13-Gunnar
in the first irrepressi- ..... '. '<N!lssOn Lotus, 51; I'-Brett Lunger, Surtees. 50: IS-Emerson
. Fittipaldi. Copersucar. 50; 16-Harald Ertl. Hesketh. 49. halfshaft;
ble Ken Tyrrell, rubbing his hands to- . 17-Henry Pescarolo. Surtees. 49; 18-A, Pesenti-Rossi. Tyrrell. 49;
gether. He was anticipating by about 19-J-P Jarier. Shadow. 47.
three months, but certainly Peterson DNF: Rolf Stommelen. 41, fuel system; Mario Andretti. 23.
(
h" T 11 t ) S h k shunt; Hans Stuck, 23. shunt; James Hunt. 11. shunt; Larry
W 0 JOlnS yrre nex year, c ec ter Perkins. 8. engine failure; Carlos Pace, 4. engine failure; Jochen
(who leaves at the end of this one) and Mass. 3, ignition,
Patick DepaiUer (who hasn't announced '--________________ ...1
anything as yet) put up a terrific nose-to-
tail chase for laps.
Until the two Tyrrell engines went off
that is, Depailler's through a misfire and
Scheckter's through a peculiar "loss of
power," and the pair of six-wheelers
gradually dropped back. Taking their
place though was the outstanding Clay
Regazzoni, who had been hopeless in
practice but who stormed through the
field in the race like a man determined to
shut up all those people who were saying
this was his last race. He overtook the
still competitive Laffite and towed him
with him, and both stayed hard after
Peterson right to the flag. Just the sligh-
test slip would have cut Ronnie off a road
that was persistantly but unpredictably
slippery with light rain showers.
"It's really difficult leading everyone
like that, having to be the one to take the
gamble for them," said SuperSwede with
the wreath around his neck, "but I was
lucky not to fall off." He was lucky with
his car too, for having announced his
decision to leave March his 761 took the
opportunity of running-for once-
without any problems the whole distance!
"When I saw the checkered flag I wasn't
sure I'd done the right thing to quit ... " he
smiled wistifully. It was the first Peter-
son victory in exactly two years-he's
now a three-timer at Monza.
But th,e hero of the weekend was Niki
Lauda. Six weeks ago he was so near the
edge of death that a priest waved his hand
over him and said. "Goodby, my son."
Continued On Next Page
HISTORIC AUTO RACES
CSRG OCTOBESRGINSVITATIONALS
Cla.'.;si(' Hpol'ts
RaeingGl'Ollp
at
SEARS POINT RACEWAY
Sunday, October 10,1976
. CSRG is a Northern California organization
dedicated to the preservation' and enjoyment of
racing as it used to be. We welcome inquiries . .
. Owners of pre.1962 Sports Racing and formula cars
are invited to join with the CSRG in a day of low
key racing arid practice.
For information, contact:
CSRG
104 Hill Road
Berkeley, CA 94708
(415) 841-7951
(415) 2847292
(415) 3927528
Perhaps the best news of the entire Italian GP weekend was that Niki Lauda has returned to F1 racing and was
able to finish in fourth position in the car seen here.
Monza Scrutineering Adds Comedy
To Confusing Italian GP Weekend
MONZA, Italy-The Marlboro McLaren
team-so said sympathetic mechanics
from other teams-had half-expected
trouble on this visit to Italy and had gone
out several days earlier than the border
posts or the wayside villages might have
anticipated. In fact they encountered no
dramas at all, and the team was beginning
to relax when in the middle of Saturday
morning's final practice a deputation of
officials went along the pits requesting
fuel samples.
It was nothing new that Monza .race
organizers were being bears about scru-
tineering. All during the meeting there
had been extraordinarily stringent meas-
urements tak-en of things like wing
heights. In fact, they were so stringent
that on Friday evening they got them-
selves into serious difficulty. They start-
ed investigating a part of the Yellow Book
that specifies airboxopenings; to paraph-
rase it, the highest part of the opening
itself must be no higher than 80 cm from
the bottom of the chassis, although there
is a further tolerance of 5 cm so that the
structure of the airbox itself may "dome
up" over the opening (After all, how else
could you make the opening?)
It is a clear indictment of the stupidity
of the current F1 regulations-which are
a hodgepodge of individual ' decisions
about problems that have arisen over
several years past and which are present-
ed in two languages in several different
sections of a book with no good correla-
tion between either themselves or the
announced earlier intention of the fram-
ers of each individual rule-that the
scrutineers could find that two teams had
illegal airboxes.
On the JPS cars, skirtings hanging
down the sides established the lower limit
of the chassis at below 80 cm from the
highest part of the airbox opening. Never
mind the new-in-July rule that simplifies
the measurement of rear wing heights at
90 cm above the ground; no simplification
was made of the airbox measurement.
Continued On Next Page