Archive for the ‘Countdown 2008’ Category
Sunday, March 9th, 2008
McLaren has won the Constructors’ Championship eight times, ranking third behind Ferrari (15) and Williams (9). The first championship came in 1974 when Emerson Fittipaldi’s driver title formed the basis of McLaren’s championship. The Brazilian scored 55 of the 73 points for the team. However, it wasn’t until the last race of the season that both titles were secured. An exceptional bad race for both Ferrari drivers, Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni, made sure that a fourth place for Fittipaldi was enough for both championships. It would take ten years for the second title to arrive. In 1984 McLaren were the strongest team by far, winning by 86 points as Niki Lauda and Alain Prost finished first and second in the championship. The next year was less of a walk over, but McLaren still won both championships. With a lead of ten points and both cars out after 57 laps in the final race, it was a tense few laps until the Ferrari of Michele Alboreto broke down, handing McLaren the championship.
Then after two years of finishing second came McLaren’s strongest year. With Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, the team won 15 of the 16 races, scoring a massive 199 points, 134 more than number two Ferrari. It was the beginning of four consecutive championships for the Woking team. After that it was another long period without much success until Mika Hakkinen won the drivers championship in 1998 and with the help of David Coulthard secured McLaren’s eight constructor’s championship.
The most significant championship for McLaren is arguably be the one that got away. In 2007 the McLaren team dominated the field with consistency and reliability. They had two driver fighting for the driver’s title but controversy and off track trouble plagued the team and they were eventually excluded from the constructors championship handing the title to to Ferrari.
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Sunday, March 9th, 2008
In its 21-year history Ligier scored nine wins. The first of these came in Ligier’s second season. In the 1977 Swedish Grand Prix, Jacques Laffite kept his head cool after a mediocre start that saw him drop from eight to eleventh. As others before him developed problems, Laffite got further and further to the front. By half distance, the Ligier driver was up to fifth place, helped by problems for both Gunnar Nilsson and Ronnie Peterson as well as a collision between John Watson and Jody Scheckter. While Laffite made his way past Mass, Depailler and Hunt, second place seemed the maximum reachable until Mario Andretti suddenly lost speed three laps from the end. This gave Laffite and Ligier their first victory.
1978 was without wins for Ligier, but in 1979 the team got off to a rocket start with wins in the first two races for Laffite. The small team shocked the grid and woke up the competition. However, before Ferrari overtook the French team, Patrick Depailler gave Ligier its third victory of the season in the Spanish Grand Prix. The next year gave Ligier another two victories. Didier Pironi won in Belgium and Laffite scored his fourth victory for Ligier in Germany. Laffite was again successful for the team in 1981 when he won in Austria and Canada. However, that was the last success for a long time. Only in the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix came another win for Ligier. Olivier Panis was one of the very few who kept his car on the track in a rain soaked Monte Carlo. In a race that saw only four cars take the chequered flag, the Frenchman scored his first and Ligier’s last victory.
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Saturday, March 1st, 2008
The heavy rain coming down in Adelaide on 3 November 1991 meant the Australian Grand Prix was red flagged after just 14 laps, making it the shortest Grand Prix in Formula One history.
As the race got underway, it was immediately apparent that the circumstances didn’t allow for a normal race. While the drivers in front had reasonable vision and were able to lap 35 to 40 seconds slower than in dry conditions, the drivers at the back had to use extreme caution and completed the first lap another 30 seconds slower than the leaders. Ayrton Senna showed his mastership in the rain and opened a gap of over three seconds in the opening lap.
Satoru Nakajima became the first victim of the rain after four laps. The next lap Michael Schumacher and Jean Alesi collided and Nicola Larini and Thierry Boutsen also retired. Three laps later Pierluigi Martini became the sixth driver to retire.
Conditions got worse quickly and driver after driver disappeared off the circuit. After 15 laps leader Ayrton Senna had enough and in his 16th lap he started waving his arm out of the cockpit to indicate to the other drivers that the race had to be stopped. As he crossed the line, the race was red flagged. In that final lap, Nigel Mansell crashed into a wall, injuring his ankle, but his second place was safe. The standing after 14 laps was declared final.
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Thursday, February 28th, 2008
Stirling Moss started from pole position in 16 races between 1955 and 1961. Moss first achieved pole position in his home Grand Prix in 1955, driving for Mercedes. He went on to win the race, also scoring his maiden win. At the next British Grand Prix, Moss was again fastest in qualifying, this time in a Maserati. In the following two years, Moss made it four consecutive British Grand Prix pole positions. In between he collected his first pole on foreign soil when he qualified fastest for the 1957 Argentine Grand Prix.
Towards the end of 1958 Moss achieved two more poles for the Vanwall team, in Italy and Portugal. However, things went even better in the next two years. In 1959 the Briton switched to Rob Walker Racing with the Cooper chassis and started from the front of the grid four times. The first two races of 1960 meant two more poles for Moss, the first in the old Cooper and the second in the new Lotus. In Holland he made it three poles in four races, but it would take until the end of the season before a fourth pole was added.
Moss collected his final pole position in the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix, before retiring at the end of the season.
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Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
[singlepic=3,150,,,left]After a very bad Canadian Grand Prix in 1968, Jackie Stewart started a very impressive sequence of 17 races in which he led at least one lap. The first race of the series immediately set the tone. Starting from second, Stewart grabbed the lead directly and never looked back. The last race of 1968 was another thing. In Mexico Jackie quickly made his way to the lead, but was no match for Graham Hill.
In the first eight races of the next season, Stewart won six times, retired from the lead in Monaco and came second at the Nurburgring after having led the first half of the race. While leading the race in Canada, the Scot lost control and crashed out. In the American Grand Prix the Tyrrell driver led only briefly, before eventually retiring. Leading the Mexican Grand Prix briefly from the start meant that Stewart had led in all of the season’s races.
In 1970 the series continued. Stewart led from pole in South Africa, while he came from third to lead every lap of the Spanish Grand Prix. From that moment lady luck started to turn her back on Stewart. In Monaco he led from the start until engine problems made a pitstop necessary and in Belgium the Scot just led for two laps in the beginning of the race before dropping back and retiring. At the Dutch Grand Prix the series ended. After having dropped back to fourth at the start, Stewart slowly made his way back to second, but Jochen Rindt was too far ahead for Stewart to grab the lead.
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