Back on track with my 1972 F1 season!
Round 7: Belgian Grand Prix - NivellesQualifying:Having never turned a wheel in a competitive session at this track - excluding some hotlapping I did four years ago IIRC - Nivelles was a great unknown for my BRM as 1972 season reached the half-way point. My championship challenge was not neccessarily very impressive with Monza and Mosport - potentially my two strongest track still some way down the road.
Nivelles - built for GP3 by the maestro Roberto Scandura himself
- was a nine turn 3.715 km circuit which to me seemed very similar to Zandvoort, only without the changes of terrain. First three corners flat out, then a couple of chicanes, one left-hander between them and then Turn Nine, the only heavy-braking zone on the circuit.
Boosted by the shakedown I went for the low downforce setup looking to make some great speeds around the flat-out bends. Indeed my first run of 1:05.089 was almost half a second quicker then Mario Andretti's 1:05.553 benchmark. I sat in the pits waiting if anybody could top that but as it turned out no one was even able to break 1:06. min. barrier let alone challenging for pole. So I scored my second pole of the season after Argentina and was very surprised by it's comfortable manner. BRM was threatening to break the Lotus/McLaren/Ferrari stranglehold on the 1972 proceedings!
Elsewhere behind Beltoise and Andretti, Jackie Stewart and Jacky Ickx filled row two with McLarens of Hulme and Revson on row three. Emerson Fittipaldi was only seventh whereas the last row featured the familiar sight of two Williamses with Graham Hill barely beating them in 20th.
Race:I got a jump on the field and breezed through the fast bends to open a four second lead at the end of the first lap and that was basically the story of the race. Thanks to low downforce I was able to top the speed charts and not lose much traction in the two chicanes and Turn Nine too. Behind me, Andretti and Stewart developed a great duell for second place while fourth was being contested by no less then five cars with Revson, Hulme passing Ickx off the line and Cevert and Fittipaldi in the mix as well. On lap 21 Ickx's Ferrari caught fire after a massive engine failure which left four cars battling among themselves.
In the meantime I opened a 15 secs. lead over Stewart who passed Andretti in Turn Nine on lap 14 and pulled away slightly. However any challenge the Tyrrell man had planned went awry on lap 34 when the Cosworth engine expired on the main straight sending Stewart on the sidelines. This was another powerplant failure of the race as to my great surprise, Nivelles took quite a hammering on the engines. Both Brabhams of Reutemann and Hill also suffered engine trouble and the field was down to 17 cars after 34 laps.
Traffic barely became an issue for me and by half-distance I opened a 33 secs. lead over Andretti with Revson third and holding up Hulme, Fittipaldi and Cevert behind him. Further back Clay Regazzoni spent the entire race behind Howden Ganley's BRM before getting fed up with this and punting Ganley off in Turn Nine on lap 50.
Few laps later there was a major shunt at the exit of the second chicane. I was approaching the chicane when the marshalls suddenly began waving yellow flags which suggested trouble. Indeed just seconds before I arrived there Dave Walker spun out from 14th place and became stuck in the middle of the road. Next up were Reine Wisell and Tim Schenken who battled for 11th spot and whilst Wisell was able to move around the stricken Lotus, Schenken clattered Walker at full-speed and both cars slid to the side of the track opposite each other. I navigated the mess and looked to be safe when suddenly I saw Carlos Pace slowing down with a blown engine in Turn Nine. I managed to squeeze underneath the Williams and dodge another bullet but during that lap I had more action then during the entire race.
Luckily for me that was the only close call all day and after 85 laps I could celebrate my first victory of the season. Mario Andretti finished second the only other car on the lead lap with Peter Revson third. Denny Hulme passed Emerson Fittipaldi on lap 67 to claim fourth while Francois Cevert was set to grab sixth when his front suspension failed on lap 76. Thus Ronnie Peterson inherited the final point allthough Niki Lauda could have been the one scoring it as he'd run ahead of Peterson until engine failure put him out on lap 59.
Mario Andretti leads the championship at half-distance but I might have something to say about that in the later stages. Worth noticing was the fact that for the first time this season neither of the BRMs suffered a mechanical retirement. Howden Ganley was punted off by Regazzoni so he might have well finished too while Reine Wisell had an electrical glitch after 20 laps but managed to nurse the car back to pits and rejoin the action. Peter Gethin finished only the second race of the season but still I'm the only BRM driver to score any points this season (same goes for Lotus where Fittipaldi does all the heavy-lifting and Dave Walker's place in the team is very much under threat).
Tim Schenken clatters into Dave Walker on lap 55 of the Belgian Grand Prix. JP Beltoise's BRM could be seen in the last pic moments after the crash occured
Championship: 1.Andretti 32, 2.Fittipaldi 27, 3.Hulme 25,
4.Beltoise 20, 5.Revson 13, 6.Ickx 10, 7.Regazzoni 7, 8.Cevert 6, 9.Stewart 5, 10.Amon 3, 11.Peterson 2
Next up: French Grand Prix @ Rouen-les-Essarts