Chequered Past

22nd May 1955: The Teddy Bear That Won at Monaco

On 22 May 1955, Maurice Trintignant — a Provençal winegrower's son who had once been declared clinically dead and carried a stuffed teddy bear in the pocket of every racing car he ever drove — became the first Frenchman to win a World Championship Grand Prix. He did it because the Mercedes-Benz juggernaut collapsed, and because Alberto Ascari — the two-time world champion who had been about to inherit the lead — drove into Monaco harbour on lap 81 and sank to the bottom. Ascari walked away. Four days later he was dead. This episode tells the story of that race in full — and three others on the same date:  * Jackie Stewart winning in 1966 as the new 3-litre formula produced just four finishers;  * Jody Scheckter and Walter Wolf's five-month-old team beating the world in 1977;  * Kimi Räikkönen winning wire-to-wire in 2005 while a championship leader burned his tyres to nothing and an Australian finally stood on a Formula One podium for the first time.  Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2506134/fan_mail/new] Music by #Mubert Music Rendering [https://mubert.com/render]

21st May 1950: The Crowd That Looked Away

On the 21st of May, Formula One has produced three races that looked, at the time, like any other Sunday — and only revealed their true significance long after the chequered flag. In 1950, at the second round of the very first World Championship, a freak wave of seawater soaked the road at Monaco's Tabac corner and wiped out half the field in an instant. Juan Manuel Fangio survived — not because of luck, but because he noticed something no one else did. In 1978 at Zolder, Mario Andretti took the wheel of a car that would change Formula One forever, and his teammate Ronnie Peterson honoured a contract that would define both their seasons. And in 2000 at the Nürburgring, Michael Schumacher raced in the rain nineteen days after his rival survived a plane crash — and turned a championship on its head. Three dates. Three pivots. One episode. Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2506134/fan_mail/new] Music by #Mubert Music Rendering [https://mubert.com/render]

20th May 1973: The Day That the Drivers Drew the Line

On 20th May, Formula 1 has a habit of making history.  In 1962, Jim Clark arrived at Zandvoort with a car that would change the sport forever — even though it didn't win.  In 1973, the drivers arrived at a brand new circuit with a surface that was falling apart, and said: we're not racing. Most of them meant it.  In 1984, Niki Lauda started ninth at Dijon and won — which was entirely typical of a season decided by half a point.  And on this date in 1975, a boy was born in Norwich whose family name was already woven into the fabric of Formula 1. Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2506134/fan_mail/new] Music by #Mubert Music Rendering [https://mubert.com/render]

19th May 1996: The Race That Destroys Its Favourites

On the nineteenth of May, three times across four decades, Monaco did what Monaco does. It destroyed the favourites and handed the race to someone else. 1. Stirling Moss, Peter Collins and Mike Hawthorn — three of the fastest drivers in the world — eliminate each other at the same chicane on the same lap. Juan Manuel Fangio threads through the wreckage at low speed and wins by going slower than everyone else. He is forty-five years old, in his final championship season, and he barely breaks a sweat. 2. Ayrton Senna takes pole position in the Lotus, leads with authority, and retires on lap fourteen when his Renault engine detonates — the victim of an accidental over-rev in Sunday morning warm-up. Alain Prost starts fifth, waits, manages, and inherits the race that should never have been his. He wins with a sticking wastegate and a broken car. He wins because he is still there. 3. Michael Schumacher crashes alone on lap one, from pole position. Damon Hill leads by thirty seconds and retires with a failed oil pump on lap forty-one. Jean Alesi inherits the lead and retires with broken suspension on lap sixty. When the two-hour limit ends the race after seventy-five laps, three cars take the chequered flag. One of them belongs to Olivier Panis, who started fourteenth. He has just won the only Grand Prix of his career, in a Ligier, on fumes, by refusing to stop. Three races. Three dates. One circuit. Monaco doesn't care who qualified fastest, who has the best car, or who leads with twenty laps to go. It has its own ideas about who deserves to win. The race destroys its favourites. The patient, the composed, the ones still moving at the end — those are the ones it crowns. Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2506134/fan_mail/new] Music by #Mubert Music Rendering [https://mubert.com/render]

18th May 1969: The Race That Wouldn't Follow The Script

On 18th May 1952, Piero Taruffi won the Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten after a former champion's Ferrari failed — twice.  On 18th May 1958, Maurice Trintignant won at Monaco after every faster car in the field broke before half distance.  On 18th May 1969, Graham Hill took his record fifth Monaco victory after the championship leader, his own teammate, and the second-place Ferrari all retired mechanical failures within six laps of each other.  On 18th May 1980, Carlos Reutemann inherited the Monaco lead when the dominant Didier Pironi clipped a barrier in the rain with twenty-two laps to go. Four races. Four eras. The same result each time. This episode of Chequered Past follows all four afternoons in detail — from the forest circuit at Bremgarten that no longer exists, through the darkest season in Monaco's history, to the regulatory drama of 1969 when a governing body banned an entire category of aerodynamic device mid-weekend, and on to the political turmoil of 1980 when Formula One's off-track war was as fierce as anything happening on it. Along the way: Graham Hill's debut at the circuit he would come to define. Jochen Rindt's open letter to the sport calling for wings to be banned — published five days after Monaco. The last championship race for Cooper. The first podium for Frank Williams as a constructor. And four winners who all shared one thing: they didn't win by being fastest. They won by still being there. Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2506134/fan_mail/new] Music by #Mubert Music Rendering [https://mubert.com/render]