Ferrari had three cars for Amon and Ickx; the latter now fit enough to drive, although his leg is still pinned and with an external brace. BRM had the same two cars for Rodriguez to choose from, while Parnell had his 126 series car for Courage.
Ken Tyrrell had the two Matra-Cosworths for Stewart and Servoz-Gavin. Neither car was any different from the previous race and the only problem the team had was whether Servoz-Gavin’s entry would be accepted. They knew just two hours before the start of the race that it would. The Matra works team had the same two cars for Beltoise and Pescarolo. The engine of the former’s now had three oil radiators over the back of the engine, two side by side and the other just behind, and all three linked up in series.
The two Coopers were unchanged and Elford and Bianchi were to drive them. Also unchanged were the two McLarens for Hulme and McLaren, but the car Hulme crashed at Watkins Glen had been rebuilt, the bulkheads being undamaged so the chassis just needed re-skinning. The third McLaren for Gurney had new, higher screens to try to enwrap the large Californian.
Honda had two cars for Surtees to choose from; the 301/802 chassis still had the engine which would not rev, but a complete change of ignition was hoped to have cured this problem. The Walker/Durlacher Lotus-Cosworth was the same and with Siffert driving as he has been lately, was more than competitive. The field was completed by Bonnier’s McLaren-BRM, which now has a nose wing as well as a much higher rear wing.
Last year’s race had been completely dominated by the late Jim Clark. He had won the race, setting the fastest laps both in the race and in the two practice sessions. The times that were the targets for this year’s race were the record 1min 48.13sec (166.466kph) and the slightly faster practice time of 1min 47.56sec.
Qualifying
First practice was on Friday from 1 to 5pm and McLaren, Surtees, and Rodriguez were off as soon as the track was open. It was not long before Stewart gave some idea of how the lap records would fall, and in under an hour he had broken both last year’s race and practice times with a 1min 46.96sec.
While setting this time, Dunlops were testing several different tyres and compounds on the Matra-Cosworth, the most successful being CR.84, which is a similar tyre to their normal CR.82 but with only the radial cuts in the tread and no cross-cuts.
Several cars were in the pits with gearboxes torn apart fitting new ratios, but Coopers were the only ones this year that seemed to be suffering from heat and this turned out to be mainly because the radiator blanking fitted at Watkins Glen hadn’t been removed.
In Elford’s Cooper was young Servoz-Gavin, who had turned up in the hope of driving the spare Matra-Cosworth, so when Elford failed to appear for first practice, the Frenchman gladly stepped in and lapped faster than Bianchi.
The third of the team Lotus cars for Solana was without wing or nose spoilers all day and was used by Hill for most of his practising, while his race car did only a limited number of laps with its movable wing in the fixed position.