The Grand Prix 100: 90-81

[Fish_Flake]

While the victories of four of the drivers ranked 90-81 were their only career podium finishes, this installment also includes two drivers who died before their primes and the first multiple Grand Prix winner on the list.

Drivers 100-91


90: Rodger Ward, United States (1921-2004)
Active: 1951-1963
Career Races: 12
Wins: 1
First Win: 1959 Indianapolis 500

Rodger Ward is the highest-ranked Indy 500 winner on the list, as well as the only one to escape the bottom ten. While best known for his two Indy victories (in 1959 and 1962), Ward dabbled in road racing throughout his driving career. In 1959, he won a Formula Libre race at Lime Rock…one that featured a who’s who of the northeastern road racing establishment and a field that included race-winning Grand Prix and sports cars…in his Kurtis Kraft-Offy midget car. For the rest of his life, he would call that race, and not his Indy wins, as the greatest achievement of his racing career. Spurred by that upset victory, Rodger and his midget then entered the inaugural U.S. Grand Prix at Sebring. Whereas the short, flowing layout of Lime Rock may have been the ideal circuit for a midget car to knock off more sophisticated European designs, the airport runways at Sebring accentuated the Kurtis Kraft’s shortcomings against the world’s best, and Ward qualified dead last in the field. Still, Rodger managed to get his car almost to half distance before finally losing the clutch.


89: Vittorio Brambilla, Italy (1937-2001)
Active: 1974-1980
Career Races: 79 (started 74)
Wins: 1
First Win: 1975 Austrian Grand Prix

During his driving days, Vittorio Brambilla was better known in the Grand Prix circus for his colorful personality than his driving skills. It is poignant, then, that he became the only driver to crash his car whilst taking the checkered flag at the site of his only F1 win, at the Osterreichring in 1975. After managing to keep the car pointed straight through 29 laps in the pouring rain, Brambilla punched his fist in the air as he crossed the finish line…and promptly spun his March into the tire barrier. Suffering serious head injuries in the same crash in the 1978 Italian Grand Prix that led to Ronnie Peterson’s death, Brambilla nevertheless recovered to race again for Alfa Romeo in 1979 and 1980 before retiring for good.


88: Peter Gethin, United Kingdom (1940- )
Active: 1970-1974
Career Races: 31 (started 30)
Wins: 1
First Win: 1971 Italian Grand Prix

After proving to be the dominant driver in Formula 5000 for McLaren, Peter Gethin got his shot at the team’s Formula 1 car in 1970. A year and a half later, he moved to BRM to replace the late Pedro Rodriguez. In what stood as the fastest race in Formula 1 history for 32 years, Gethin passed three cars on the final lap at Monza to edge Ronnie Peterson, Francois Cevert, Mike Hailwood, and Howden Ganley in the closest finish in Formula 1 history. As BRM’s fortunes declined after the deaths of both Rodriguez and Jo Siffert in 1971, the last lap at Monza proved to be the only one Gethin would ever lead. After 1972, Gethin decided that Formula 5000 was a better place for him, and only made a pair of one-off Grand Prix appearances later.


87: Ludovico Scarfiotti, Italy (1933-1968)
Active: 1963-1968
Career Races: 12 (started 10)
Wins: 1
First Win: 1966 Italian Grand Prix

Ludovico Scarfiotti was Ferrari’s sports car ace during the 1960s, and as such only appeared sporadically for the Scuderia on the Grand Prix grid during a career that was tragically cut short at a German hillclimb in 1968 (ironically, at the wheel of a Porsche). He is still revered by the tifosi, though, for being the last Italian driver to date to win his home race, which fittingly came in a Ferrari in 1966.


86: Joakim Bonnier, Sweden (1930-1972)
Active: 1956-1971
Career Races: 108 (started 104)
Wins: 1
First Win: 1959 Dutch Grand Prix

Jo Bonnier delivered BRM its maiden victory as a constructor at Zandvoort in 1959, but that win did not propel the scholarly Swede to greater success. He also won the 1960 German Grand Prix, but the event that year was held on the Nurburgring Sudschleife under Formula 2 regulation. After a mediocre two-year stint as a Porsche factory driver ending in 1962, Bonnier became a regular driver in Rob Walker’s privateer outfit, then formed his own customer team in 1966. He served as driver and manager for both his Formula 1 and sports car programs until his death at Le Mans in 1972. He also had a goatee that was a good two generations ahead of its time.


85: Gunnar Nilsson, Sweden (1948-1978)
Active: 1976-1977
Career Races: 32 (started 31)
Wins: 1
First Win: 1977 Belgian Grand Prix

Like his compatriot Bonnier, Gunnar Nilsson only captured a single win during his Formula 1 career. Unlike Bonnier, he had few opportunities to tally a second. Winning the 1975 British Formula 3 championship earned Nilsson a drive with Lotus for 1976. Two podiums meant that Colin Chapman retained him as a teammate for Mario Andretti the next season, when he won at Zolder. Sadly, Nilsson learned that he developed testicular cancer during the 1977-78 offseason, the disease that would take his life shortly after the conclusion of Lotus’ dominant 1978 season. Who knows what Gunnar would have been capable of at the wheel of the Lotus 79?


84: Innes Ireland, United Kingdom (1930-1993)
Active: 1959-1966
Career Races: 53 (started 50)
Wins: 1
First Win: 1961 United States Grand Prix

Before his career as a race car driver, Innes Ireland served as a paratrooper in the British Army. Making his debut with a fledgling Lotus team in 1959, Ireland ultimately gave the team – but not its cars – its first Grand Prix victory at Watkins Glen in 1961. That turned out to be Innes’ last ride with Lotus, as he was fired at the end of the season in retaliation to Ireland offering his factory car to Stirling Moss of Rob Walker’s customer team. After drifting through the Formula 1 garage for several seasons, Innes retired to a career in journalism.


83: Jean-Pierre Jabouille, France (1942- )
Active: 1974-1980
Career Races: 55 (started 49)
Wins: 2
First Win: 1979 French Grand Prix
Last Win: 1980 Austrian Grand Prix

A Sorbonne-educated engineer, Jean-Pierre Jabouille made his way up the lower formulas of racing in cars of his own design. A championship-winning 1976 Formula Two campaign convinced Renault to hire Jabouille to head development of their ground-breaking turbo Formula 1 engine. Best described as an able driver armed with knowledge of every part of the temperamental cars he also built, the Frenchman earned his due reward when he piloted his Renault to victory in front of his home crowd in 1979; another victory in the high altitude of the Styrian countryside followed the next year. His mission at Renault accomplished, he made plans to work for Ligier in 1981 in an effort reinvigorate the aging Matra V12. Unable to recover fully from a leg-breaking crash at the 1980 Montreal race, he retired from racing after the 1981 Spanish Grand Prix.


82: Luigi Musso, Italy (1924-1958)
Active: 1953-1958
Career Races: 25 (started 23)
Wins: 1
First Win: 1956 Argentine Grand Prix (shared with Juan Manuel Fangio)

Luigi Musso is one of two drivers to achieve his only Formula 1 win in a shared drive: after driving the first 30 laps of the 1956 season opener in Buenos Aires, he gave his drive up to Juan Manuel Fangio after the latter’s car retired early on. While Musso did not win a race in his own right during a career that ended when he was killed at the 1958 French Grand Prix, he played an integral role in Ferrari’s return to form in the late 1950s, scoring a pair of runner-up finishes in 1957 and another two in the first two races of the 1958 championship.


81: Olivier Panis, France (1966- )
Active: 1994-2004
Career Races: 158 (started 157)
Wins: 1
First Win: 1996 Monaco Grand Prix

Olivier Panis first turned heads in Formula 1 at the 1994 German Grand Prix, leading a Ligier 2-3 finish behind Gerhard Berger’s Ferrari. Panis finished all but one race during his rookie season, although he was disqualified in Portugal for a worn skid block. Panis took his only career win in the rain at Monaco in 1996, and at the time the argument could be made that Olivier would eventually earn many more. Two podiums in the renamed Prost early in 1997 suggested that Panis was destined to be his new team owner’s successor as a French champion, but like Jabouille, a leg-breaking crash in Canada derailed his career. While he raced for six more seasons with Prost, BAR, and Toyota, he never finished on the podium again.

20 down, 80 to go. Feel free to discuss.

[Ralf's Girl]

Great post again, Flake, consider it stickied.

[Armco Bender]

Vittorio Brambilla....my all time favourite armco bender...totally fearless...drove the wheels off those Marches.

[Alan Raine]

Originally Posted by Armco Bender

Vittorio Brambilla.drove the wheels off those Marches.

And many other parts as well

[Bleu]

I made guess of next ten drivers after yesterday and got five of them correct.


So my next 10 (in order of first win): Taruffi, Bandini, Ginther, Siffert, Beltoise, Pace, Mass, Herbert, Button, Kovalainen.

[JamesRamone]

Alesi will be comming up in the next list i'd say

[Fish_Flake]

Originally Posted by Bleu

I made guess of next ten drivers after yesterday and got five of them correct.


So my next 10 (in order of first win): Taruffi, Bandini, Ginther, Siffert, Beltoise, Pace, Mass, Herbert, Button, Kovalainen.

Just out of curiosity, which ten drivers did you guess?

[Bleu]

Originally Posted by Fish_Flake

Just out of curiosity, which ten drivers did you guess?

Ten I mentioned earlier are my guesses for positions 80-71.

Or do you mean pos 90-81? Then it was Ward, Brambilla, Gethin, Scarfiotti, Ireland (correct ones), Taruffi, Ginther, Beltoise, Mass and Herbert.

[Fish_Flake]

For the record, the three drivers in this segment whom I had the hardest time settling on their ranking were Nilsson, Jabouille, and Musso.

Nilsson certainly would have finished his career with many more wins had life not handed him one of the cruelest fates of all time. I mean, taking on an extremely dangerous profession and doing it fearlessly, only to wither away in a hospital of natural causes before age 30? That's unbelievably harsh. But he only raced for two seasons, and thus never had the time to establish a lasting impression in Formula 1. Ultimately, his career results were too thin to justify ranking him higher.

Jabouille is the lowest-ranked multiple winner on this list, but the logic to place him there had me running in circles. He won two races, but those races were his only career podium finishes, and he only scored points one other time. Perhaps, but he retired from so many races due to engine trouble. But he built that engine. And the lessons that he learned from those retirements helped him turn the Renault from a slow, unreliable engine to an incredibly fast, unreliable engine. And the entire reason Renault hired him to drive the car was because there was no way any other driver was going to spend the two years Jabouille did running hopelessly off the pace powered by an uncoventional engine that blew up most of the time. Oh, there would have been drivers who would jump at that opportunity, but they wouldn't have been able to offer the technical input Jabouille offered to develop the Renault into more than an explosive device. When the car finally became something that could win races on a regular basis in late 1979 and 1980, Rene Arnoux thoroughly trounced him in the points. (No comeback.)

Fangio drove 2/3 of the 1956 Argentine GP, but Musso still gets equal credit in the record books for the victory. Based on the quality of his victory alone, he should be at the very bottom, but finished on the podium over a quarter of the time despite being in the middle of a crowded and talented Ferrari lineup and missing significant time to injury in 1956, and was only 33 when he died.

[Born Racer]

Nice work Fish_Flake.

I was always something of a Panis fan since 1994. I can't believe just how high up he was in the standings in 1997 before his accident.

[SennaTheGreat]

Another nice piece of work there. Keep it up mate

[Bononi]

Great stuff !

[JamesRamone]

Autosport have a nice picture chart of all the winners in this weeks issue

[JeremySmith]

That is beautiful work Fish_Flake...

[Super Hans]

Fantastic stuff Fish_Flake.

[JohnSSC]

Originally Posted by Armco Bender

Vittorio Brambilla....my all time favourite armco bender...totally fearless...drove the wheels off those Marches.

Vittorio Brambilla, "the Monza Gorilla!" Ahh, the stuff of youth!

[Fish_Flake]

A little update: I've had a hectic couple of weeks since the last installment of the rankings, so I haven't been able to post #80-71 just yet. Those should be on the forum by Thursday.

[JamesRamone]

I understand your busy, but will this be carried on at any stage? Or i have i missed a new thread? I really enjoyed the first posts. Thanks

[Fish_Flake]

By the end of the week, I swear this time.

[Yannick]

Here's hoping that this intended series of posts will continue. It's an interesting project you've started, Fish_Flake. Who would have though that it would become the F1 101 so soon?

[Bononi]

Come on Yannick, don't push the man.

[Yannick]

Originally Posted by Bononi

Come on Yannick, don't push the man.

OK.

[Fish_Flake]

An update's coming today. I guarantee it.