Mosport Park, Toronto
In the two weeks between the final European Grand Prix at Monza and the penultimate round of the World Championship series, at Toronto’s scenic Mosport Park circuit, an international Court of Appeal set up by the Federation International de l’Automobile in Paris took an unprecedented and highly controversial decision. They reversed the decision of the Royal Automobile Club who had rejected Ferrari’s appeal that Niki Lauda should be reinstated into fifth place in the British Grand Prix, the position he certainly lost when the RAC’s “organisation” failed to allow him back on the circuit after his tyre change late in the race at Brands Hatch. The FIA consequently re-wrote the order from fifth to tenth places, pushing Carlos Reutemann back to sixth place, depriving the hitherto sixth place Hulme of his single point and giving Lauda two extra points to add to his total. The rights and wrongs of such a decision do not concern this report, but one hopes this unsavoury episode is now closed for good as it raises serious questions about the validity of any World Championship scoring system and throws the history books into chaos.
However, most of the talk in Mosport Park’s paddock did not concern the Ferrari appeal, for two brand new American Formula One teams had arrived on the scene for their very first race. Perhaps one should emphasise that the teams were only “new” to Formula One, for both contained plenty of proven ingredients from other racing categories and both turned out their new cars in such an immaculate condition that they rather out-shone some of the “old hands”. Technically the most interesting was the Maurice Phillippe designed Parnelli VPJ4 which marks this designer’s return to the Grand Prix scene after three fruitful years spent designing USAC machines for former Indianapolis winner Parnelli Jones. Sponsored by Viceroy cigarettes, the USAC Parnellis have enjoyed a great deal of success in the hands of Mario Andretti, Joe Leonard and Al Unser, but now the team decided on an audacious move into Formula One with a Cosworth-powered “British standard kit car”. Mario Andretti was the driver, this being his first race in Formula One since 1972.
