Not the busiest day ever in racing history, 3 February certainly was diverse in its action
There was one grand prix in Brazil in 1974, but it wasn’t a championship round. Emerson Fittipaldi powered his McLaren M23 Cosworth (above)to win the Gran Premio Presidente Emilio Medici at the Autodromo de Brasilia.
Many years before, Eddie O’Donnell took his Duesenberg to win the 1915 Tropica AAA Champ Car Series Race, 20 years before Per-Viktor Widengren took his Alfa-Romeo 2300 8C Monza to victory in an icy 1935 Norrkoepingsloppet in snowy Sweden. Moving to the midsummer down under, Pat Hoare’s Ferrari 256 and Tom Wilson in a Cooper Climax shared the 1962 Dunedin Road Race honours at Warwick Farm.
Jim Hall won the first United States Road Racing Championship driving a Cooper Monaco at Daytona in 1963, Max Stewart took the 1974 Aussie Oran Park 100 in a Lola T330 Chevrolet and France’s Loic Duval and South Africa’s Adrian Zaugg shared out the 2008 Eastern Creek Australian A1 GP races. Race 1 Lola-Zytek. Ten years later Jean-Eric Vergne won the 2018 Santiago Formula E ePrix in Chile.
In the Daytona 24 Hour over the years, Reinhold Joest, Volkert Merl and Rolf Stommelen took the 1980 win in a Porsche 935J (above), Thierry Boutsen, AJ Foyt, Al Unser and Bob Wollek won in a Porsche 962C in ’85 and Hurley Haywood, Frank Jelinski, Henri Pescarolo and John Winter were the 1991 winners in a Porsche 962C. Mauro Baldi, Fredy Lienhard, Max Papis and Didier Theys broke that Porsche stranglehold in a Dallara SP1 Judd in 2002.
In NASCAR action, Paul Goldsmith drove Smokey Yunick’s Pontiac to victory in the last stock car race ever held on the beach at Daytona in 1958 and 61 years later, Matt Campbell, Dennis Olsen and Dirk Werner drove their Porsche 911 GT3 R to 2019 Bathurst 12 Hour honours in Aussie.
Also on Daytona Beach on this day in 1929 Major Harry Seagrave drove his Golden Arrow (below) to a new 370 km/h land speed record and in 1953 Art Chrisman made the first sub-10 second and over 140-mph quarter mile run with a 9.4-second 140.08 mph pass at on at Santa Ana, California.
Midland nee’ Jordan launched billionaire Alex Schnaider’s first-ever ‘Russian’ Formula 1 car in 2006. And former gentleman F1 driver Johnny Claes succumbed to tuberculosis aged 30 0n this day in 1956.
