Fifty years ago Formula One saw the safety car used for the first time. The results were shambolic and it’s still not totally clear who actually won. This is the story of that epic tangle of a race.
Sitting ten miles North of the bank of Lake Ontario sits Mosport Park. This is the original home of the Canadian Grand Prix. An old fashioned uphill and down dale circuit of the old school. The Formula One World Championship last raced there in 1977 before the event found a new home at the circuit on the Île Notre-Dame in Montreal, on a circuit now baring the name of Canada’s most famous racer (sorry Latifi fans). Like the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve it is a place which can boast a truly epic wet Grand Prix. Unlike Jenson Button’s famous win in 2011 however, there are still some question marks about what actually happened in 1973 when the safety car came out for the first time in F1.
Mosport was popular with drivers and fans alike. It offers some beautiful scenery, the sort of hospitality Canada is famous for, and a truly challenging roller-coaster of a circuit. The only real complaints anyone had about the place were that it was a little basic in terms of amenities, and that the circuit could be bumpy due to bitter and harsh Canadian winters. Fifty years ago Canada and Mosport were to host the penultimate round of the season.
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All done and dusted.
The race had an end of term atmosphere. Jackie Stewart had clinched his third World Title at the previous race, the Italian Grand Prix. So, the last two rounds, Canada and the U.S. Grand Prix at Watkins Glen were races for the sake of racing. In fact, unbeknownst to almost everyone, Stewart had decided to hang up his helmet at the end of the season and was looking to enjoy his last couple of races. This would turn to unspeakable tragedy at Watkins Glen. First though the Canadian race would provide its own, far less tragic, but compelling drama.
Tyrrell and Stewart were the class of the field in 1973, but back then this didn’t translate to the sort of domination we’re used to seeing now. Lotus and McLaren also proved themselves capable of winning races over the course of the season.
Qualifying proved this with Sweden’s Ronnie Peterson taking pole in the beautiful black and gold Lotus 72. Peter Revson and Jody Scheckter’s McLarens were not too far off the pace. The Tyrrell’s meanwhile struggled in comparison with their usual form with Cevert managing sixth and Stewart, perhaps now content to coast a little, putting his car into an uncharacteristic ninth on the grid. Aside from all this the only real drama was the diminutive Italian Arturo Merzario. He had a big accident in the first Qualifying session. His Ferrari leaving the circuit at Turn Three and careening through two catch fences. The car lost most of its bodywork, but Merzario was able to walk away. The dangers of 1970s Grand Prix racing had shown themselves never to be too far away once again.
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The Flag Drops
Race day dawned with heavy rain rolling in off the great lake to the South. The conditions in the morning practice caught many drivers out. Even pole sitter Peterson binned the Lotus spare car (thankfully not his own race car) into the armco, bending it badly. The odds were shifting in favor of those drivers running Firestone wet tyres. These had shown themselves to be very effective at Zandvoort early in the year. A young Austrian pay driver named Niki Lauda had used them on his BRM. During wet practice at that event he’d set some astonishingly quick times.
The start was delayed due to these conditions, though only by 30 minutes. The field switched to wets. All except an optimistic Jean Pierre Beltoise in his BRM who went with Inters, hoping against hope the circuit would dry. The flag dropped and 26 cars roared away from the grid chucking huge rooster trails of spray into the air.
Almost immediately Lauda surged forward. The softly sprung BRM, paired with the Firestones and Lauda’s obvious ability were the combination to beat in the wet. By lap four he was leading a Grand Prix for the first time in what would be an incredibly illustrious career. By lap ten the Austrian was nearly 15 seconds ahead of the field. Scheckter and Peterson were busy battling it out for second. Stewart, and the 1972 World Champion Emerson Fittipaldi in the other Lotus having their own duel behind this. Carlos Pace had hustled his Surtees into the points but had Jackie Oliver in the Shadow breathing down his neck.
Dry Weather Causes Chaos
All through the field cars twitched, slid and spun on the wet surface. By now though the rain had stopped and soon the track began to dry rapidly. Carlos Pace proved to be the first driver to dive into the pits on lap 18 for slicks as his wets were beginning to tear themselves to bits in the dry. Around this time Ronnie Peterson clattered the armco, managing to ruin his Lotus’ rear suspension ending the pole sitter’s weekend. What followed was a period of pit lane related chaos. Pit operations of the era were a far cry from the well drilled sequences of today. Airgun lines trailed everywhere, mechanics collided with one another, tools and spare wheels scattered around, and all the time cars, no pit lane speed limits here, screamed in and out.
Lauda came in from the lead, asked for dry’s, in a welter of confusion got inters, and left in eighth much confused. Behind him many of the pack bundled in for slicks. Fittipaldi took over the lead with Jackie Oliver in the Shadow well up with him. Beltoise was doing very nicely thank you on his original set of intermediates finding himself running in the points. He had started 16th. The wets couldn’t last though and Fittipladi was forced to come in on lap 32 handing the lead briefly to Stewart, who then came in handing it to Beltoise who swapped it with Oliver who then had to pit himself.
If it sounds confusing, it was, and electronic timing really wasn’t a thing. The running order was worked out by hand via stop-watch and lap chart. Given the comparative chaos of the race at this point nobody was really sure who was where. The above seems the most probable sequence of events and leaders.
Scheckter Vs Cevert
What happened next though would layer pandemonium on top of chaos. Jody Scheckter was then in his wild rookie phase, a far cry from the polished refined calculating driver who would become World Champion in 1979. Nobody doubted his immense speed and car control, but his judgment? Arguably another matter. He’d already instigated what was one of F1’s greatest pile-ups at Silverstone that season. Now he would try what might be best termed an over-optimistic move on Francois Cevert’s Tyrrell. His lunge resulted in his McLaren pitching Cevert, nose first, into the barrier while Scheckter spun into retirement himself.
The talented young Frenchman was incandescent. He leapt out of the badly bent Tyrrell to give Scheckter a piece of his mind, and possibly a great deal more than that. Thankfully the marshalls got between the two and prevented an international incident. By then Cevert had realized he had two very badly bruised and battered ankles and needed to sit down anyway. Sadly, given the appalling events at Watkins Glen two weeks later, this action was the last Francois Cevert took during an actual Grand Prix.
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The Dawn Of The Safety Car Era
Now there were two badly beaten up racing cars lying in the middle of the circuit needing to be cleared away. Someone had reported Cevert’s ankle problems and to that end an ambulance and a couple of recovery trucks peeled onto the circuit. After the tragedies of the Dutch Grand Prix earlier in the season the FIA had decided to bring in new rules in such cases. Thus, for the first time ever, a safety car took to the circuit in Formula One.
The bright yellow Porsche 914 took to the track. The idea was for it to pick up the leader as they do today, however in the chaos of the previous few laps nobody really knew who that was. Opinion was divided, and still is, between Beltoise, Oliver, and Fittipaldi. The safety car picked up none of these drivers and instead chose Howden Ganley, the New Zealander driving the Frank Williams entered ISO Malboro. This decision allowed Oliver and Revson to streak away as they came out from their stops ahead of the crocodile of cars headed by the Porsche 914 and Ganley and make up nearly a full lap, coming up to join the back of the queue.
For ten laps they circulated like this before the wrecks of Cevert and Scheckter’s machines were removed. The order behind the Safety car was now Ganley, Fittipaldi (who looked to have been royally screwed by events), and the rest of the field. Beltoise who was in there, might actually have been the leader, followed by Oliver who also might be, and Revson who was probably second, or third. Perhaps.
Pandemonium & Howden Ganley
At long last, the safety car then came in and Ganley, who had decided that he might as well behave as if he was leading (and to be fair to him, who’s to say he actually wasn’t?), decided to give it all he had. The result was astonishing. The ISO-Marlboro was not a great car, but for eight determined laps Ganley held off Fittipaldi (the defending World Champion let us not forget) and recorded a lap three seconds faster than his own qualifying time. Emerson eventually squeezed through and started setting off after Oliver and Beltoise who had nearly a lap on him.
Oliver, who had now fought his way past Beltoise believed he was leading, as did the circuit commentator, but then the British driver suddenly slowed with a sticking throttle, mud having got into the slides. Beltoise and Revson nipped back through, but apparently this was missed by the track commentary team who now seemed to believe the race was between Oliver and the charging Fittipaldi. Meanwhile the lap charts being kept by the individual teams offered wildly different opinions on what was actually going on.
Forza Fittipaldi!
The race grew to an astonishing climax. Fittipaldi was catching Oliver hand over fist, and Oliver was catching Beltoise. The three converged in the final two laps with Fittipaldi hurling his Lotus past both of them. Immediately Oliver managed to get his nose in front of Beltoise who, incredibly, was still on the intermediate tyres he’d started the race on.
As the cars rounded what they all believed to be the final corner the Lotus team surged to the pit wall to welcome home Fittipaldi in what they thought was a historic victory. Lotus boss Colin Chapman even went through his traditional hat throwing celebration on the finish line. But the checkered flag didn’t wave for Fittipaldi, or Oliver, or Beltoise.
It did wave for another group of cars though. A group of cars headed by Ganley. Only it transpired the timekeepers hadn’t meant to wave it for Ganley, but for Revson, who was behind him. Confusion reigned supreme.
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My Lap Chart’s Better Than Yours.
What followed was four hours of wrangling as the official timekeepers and the teams comparing their lap charts. The final result was that Peter Revson was declared the winner for McLaren with Fittipaldi second. Oliver came home third, Beltoise fourth, Stewart fifth and Ganley (who ISO’s lap chart, kept by his own girlfriend, unsurprisingly had winning) in sixth. To this day though nobody is really sure. Revson was credited as having completed 81 laps in a race scheduled for 80. Beltoise didn’t stop, but the lap charts said he did. Ganley likewise was shown to have stopped and maintained he didn’t. Fittipaldi was felt, by many, to be the moral victor as his race had been ruined by the safety car. Oliver too cannot be discounted.
Who knows?
What is certain is that there had never been a Grand Prix finish mired in such confusion before. Mercifully there hasn’t really been since. It is perhaps just as well that the title was already settled, had it not been the controversy might still be raging to this day.