Why Zeltweg is the best and worst circuit to ever host an F1 race

‎After just nine of the scheduled 105 laps, three cars had suffered mechanical failures caused by excessive vibration — Amon’s Lotus-Climax (again), Graham Hill’s pole-winning BRM, and John Surtees’ Ferrari, which he had qualified alongside Hill’s BRM on the front row. The Ferrari had ground to a halt with partially collapsed rear suspension; Surtees, always a canny chap, realised that attrition would be high, so he walked briskly back to the pits, collected a jack, a set of spanners, and an armful of spares, walked briskly back to his stricken car, and set about trying to fix it. That he did, and he duly drove it slowly back to the pits. Sadly, his indefatigably competitive endeavours could not be rewarded, for the car was still too damaged to race. By all accounts he was delighted to go home, his journey made all the more pleasurable because he did it at the wheel of a Ferrari 330GT.

Next up, Trevor Taylor’s BRP-BRM suffered a suspension failure, shortly followed by halfshaft breakages for the Lotus-Climaxes of both Clark and Mike Spence. Soon after, Gurney’s leading Brabham-Climax was stopped by — yes, you guessed it — suspension failure, and a few laps after that Jochen Rindt, who was making his F1 grand prix debut, was disappointed but unsurprised to find that his Brabham-BRM’s steering had been shaken awry and was no longer operable. At half-distance only nine of the 20 starters remained, and, of those nine, two, Brabham’s Brabham-Climax and Innes Ireland’s BRP-BRM, had already been lapped by the leaders, having spent time in the pits for running repairs.

Phil Hill had seen the decimation all around and, both astute and wary, he began to sense that his Cooper-Climax was getting loose at the rear. Suspension failure? Yes, sir. As he exited Turn 3, Inner, his car sagged at the back and ran wide, hit the straw bales that marked the outside of the corner, and pirouetted to a stop, hurling its hapless pilot out of the cockpit as it did so. Hill was a bit bruised but otherwise unhurt — and, with hindsight, extremely lucky, for his car suddenly burst into flames. From a safe distance he stood and watched it burn to the ground.

In the final quarter of the race a suspension radius arm broke on Mike Hailwood’s Lotus-BRM, but he nursed it back to the pits for repairs. Once they had been effected, out he went again, despite having lost 10 laps. Brabham was still toiling around at the back, too, 29 laps in arrears.

So who won? Here is how DSJ phrased that almost irrelevant detail in his Motor Sport report: “Lorenzo Bandini [Ferrari] was the winner of this strange race that had been characterised by reliability rather than driver ability.” Ginther (BRM) was the only other driver on the winner’s lap, and third, albeit three laps behind, was Bob Anderson, nursing his privateer Brabham-Climax at half-speed lest its already impaired driveshaft break entirely.

Despite the circumstances, Bandini was overjoyed. After all, an F1 grand prix win is an F1 grand prix win, and it was his first. It would also be his last. Nonetheless, he was a quick man. He was also from humble origins, charming, and popular with almost everyone. Altogether he raced 42 F1 grands prix, nearly all of them for Ferrari, and, in addition to his victory in Austria in 1964, he scored seven other F1 grand prix podium finishes. He also won the non-championship F1 Mediterranean Grand Prix at Enna-Pergusa in 1962, the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1963, the Targa Florio in 1965, and the Daytona 24 Hours and Monza 1000km in 1967, all in Ferraris.

As far as F1 was concerned, he started 1967 well, racing his Ferrari to a very close second in the season-opening non-championship F1 Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, just 0.4sec behind Dan Gurney’s winning Eagle-Weslake. Next up was Monaco, his favourite circuit. He qualified second, and he led at the start, but he was quickly passed by both Jackie Stewart (BRM) and Denny Hulme (Brabham-Repco). Stewart then stopped with diff trouble, leaving Bandini behind only Hulme.

All was not yet lost, for Bandini soon began to reel Hulme in, and he must have scented victory. He started to push visibly harder, using all the road, shaving the barriers everywhere. On lap 82, with 18 still to go therefore, he clipped the guardrail at the sea-front chicane — then a superfast left-right flick-flick — and his car flew into the straw bales beside the harbour wall. Upside-down, it caught fire, and Bandini could not get out of it. The marshals were slow to react and, when they finally set to, their efforts to douse the blaze were compromised by the arrival of a helicopter carrying TV cameramen, which hovered above them, its rotor blades fanning the flames, amplifying them to a new intensity. The race went on — even though, when no car was passing, the spectators could clearly hear Bandini’s cries for help from within the inferno. Eventually, he was pulled out, but he was burned beyond hope. He was taken to Princess Grace Polyclinic Hospital, where he died three days later. A further three days after that, his funeral, in Reggiolo, Italy, was attended by 100,000 mourners.

I will leave the last word to his widow, Margherita, who posted on her Facebook page the following letter to him, on December 21, 2012, which would have been his 77th birthday. She wrote it in Italian. Here follows an English translation. I must warn you that it is impossible to read with dry eyes.

Caro Lorenzo,

Today, your birthday, you would have been 77 years old. 

So much time has passed since the tragedy of your fire at Monaco. Nonetheless, as you know, I believe ardently in the afterlife, and I am therefore certain that you are reading these words of mine, as well as the comments beneath my words that will be added by friends and admirers, many of whom were not yet born when you left us 45 years ago. Those who remember you do so with enormous affection, admiration, and esteem, and, for that reason, I hope fervently that you appreciate the wonderful legacy that you have left behind you. 

Lorenzo, my love, do you remember that you once told me that you felt you had been born unlucky? With the benefit of hindsight it is hard to contradict you, but let me nonetheless say this. In your 31 years on this Earth you had already become a great man, that greatness exemplified by your modesty, your determination, and your passion for a sport that you loved more than anything else in the world; and, because of all that, you have left behind you, for us, an indelible memory.

So, actually, I would not call you unlucky. Nor, even though I still miss you bitterly, would I call myself unlucky. I am still here, now, aged 74, and I am still able to celebrate the fact that I have cherished the great love of two wonderful men: you and our son. I have known terrible suffering, yes, but also incredible joy, and for that incredible joy I give thanks, daily, to both of you.

Con amore, Margherita