Posts Tagged ‘Ferrari 312T’

Long Beach Grand Prix 1976…

Posted: April 17, 2017 in F1, Fotos
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(Klemantaski)

Clay Regazzoni oblivious to the ‘Queen Mary’s existence as he races to victory from pole in his Ferrari 312T, US Grand Prix West in March 1976…

I’ve never been to the place but Chris Pook’s idea was a great piece of entrepreneurship.

His first 1975 event, a marvellous demonstration of what is great about F5000 was followed by a championship GeePee in ’76. The other thing that captured my imagination about the place was the Depailler in-car Tyrrell footage. If you weren’t a PD fan, I always was, you had to be so after seeing him flick the 500bhp beastie through the Long Beach boulevards as though it were a 100bhp Lola T342 Formula Ford. The ability that separates the greats from the rest of us. Check it out if you’ve not seen it, look again if you have!;

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Nice portrait of Regga in 1978, Shadow Ford. Looks like a a Bell photo shoot ! (Getty)

Regga, a GP driver with a personality, they seem to breed it out of ‘em these days, anodyne boring liddl’ fuggers they all seem to be. The Swiss Italian had a great weekend in California winning from teammate Niki Lauda’s 312T and Depailler’s Tyrrell 007 DFV, the sound of which (Tyrrell 008 anyway) screaming in protest you can see, hear and feel in the footage above.

Tailpiece: Niki Lauda prepares for the off in the other Fazz 312T, 2nd place for the plucky Austrian reigning champion…

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Niki Lauda contemplates changes to his Ferrari 312T during Long Beach practice. Mauro Forghieri’s 312T-T4, jewels of cars, circa 525bhp @ 11000 rpm at this stage of the 3 litre flat-12;s long front-running life (Schlegelmilch)

Credits…

Klemantaski Collection, Rainer Schlegelmilch

Ergonomic and Visual Perfection…

Posted: July 10, 2016 in F1, Fotos
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The workplace to which so many aspire but so few ascend!…

Lucky, talented bastards those who do! In this case it’s the cockpit of Niki Lauda or Clay Regazzoni’s Ferrari 312T during the 1975 Italian GP weekend at Monza.

Niki and Ferrari took the drivers and constructors titles that year in these superbly designed and built cars. The Momo leather bound steering wheel and Veglia Borletti instruments are about as good as it gets for many of us and oh-so-period perfection…

Credit…

Rainer Schlegelmilch

Ian Ashley…

Posted: February 15, 2016 in F1, Fotos
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Ian Ashley’s Williams FW03 Ford sits forlornly beside the Pflanzgarten Armco while Niki Lauda turns in, Ferrari 312T, Nurburgring, German GP practice 1 August 1975…

Ashley had his car, teammate Jacques Laffitte was quick in the evolved FW04 that year, in 20th grid position, when he had one of several huge career shunts, not of his own making. Ian takes up the story;

‘I had several things go wrong in practice, including a stuck throttle, which turned out to be a broken engine mount. There are four plates which used to hold the Cosworth onto the monocoque, and the top left plate had snapped. They didn’t check any of the others, and on the final qualifying run, and I was up to 9th or 12th by then – I hadn’t actually done a flying lap, only what they call a rolling lap, and my fastest lap was on my warming-up lap – I was ten seconds up on my flying lap when one of the bottom engine mounts snapped, and it just turned sharp left along the straight, and I went straight into the armco at 160mph. Nobody realised straight away what had happened, and I had chipped an ankle, so I missed one race of the F5000 series, but I managed to hang on to my lead’ (of the European F5000 Championship in which he ultimately finished 4th in Lola’s T330 and T400)

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Marshals gather the remains of Ian Ashley’s ‘lightened and modified’ Williams FW03 Ford, Nurburgring 1975. The dangers of frontal impacts in aluminium monocoques of the period 1962 to circa 1982 readily apparent and certainly greatly superior to the chassis of earlier times! He was lucky the result was not a good deal worse, the car, originally designed by John Clarke in 1973 stood up to the big impact pretty well. The dude holding the helmet, to state the obvious, is the pilot of the medical chase car not Ashley…(unattributed)

For an interesting interview/summary of Ian Ashley’s career, and the trials and tribulations of trying to get into F1 with underprepared cars and/or ‘shitboxes’, click on this link;

http://8w.forix.com/ashley.html

In the GP Lauda was 3rd, Carlos Reutemannhttp won in a Brabham BT44B Ford and Laffitte was a career-enhancing 2nd and off to the new Ligier Matra outfit at seasons end.

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Ian Ashley in Frank William’s FW03 before the engine mount failure, German GP practice 1975 (unattributed)

Credit…

Rainer Schlegelmilch, 8w.forix.com, motorsport.com

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Carlos Reutemann on his way to German GP, Nurburgring victory in August 1975. Brabham BT44B Ford (unattributed)

Tailpiece: Ian Ashley in recent times in an historic Elden Mk8 FF…

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Flying Ferraris’ @ Flugplatz ! Niki Lauda German GP 1975…

Posted: October 22, 2014 in F1
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Niki Lauda aviating his 312T in the Eifel Mountains, 1975…

He won the race and the world championship for the first time that year.

Ferrari turned the corner of uncompetitiveness with the 312B in 1970, the combination of chassis and new ‘flat 12’ engine was very competitive in the second half of the season.

Into 1971-3 they largely lost the plot with their chassis…Mauro Forghieri returned from the wilderness in late 1973.

The 1974 combination of Lauda, then in his third year of F1, Ferrari ‘returnee’ Clay Regazzoni, Forghieri and very young Luca Di Montezemolo as Team Manager commenced an era of Ferrari success if not dominance.

The cars were powerful, relatively light despite the additional fuel load needed by the Flat12 relative to the Ford Cosworth V8, handled superbly and were as aerodynamically advanced as the competition, until the ‘game-changing’ Lotus 78 arrived at least .

Lauda, Regga, Reutemann, Villeneuve, and Scheckter extracted all the performance as well.

The 1975 312T, so called because of the transverse location of the gears within the ‘box was the start of a series of cars which won drivers world titles in 1975, ’77, and ’79 for Lauda twice and Jody Scheckter once.

The car was not the prettiest of the mid-70’s to my eye but was an incredibly cohesive, beautifully integrated design. Without doubt one of Ferraris finest.

Lauda was up for the developmental and testing task, it was why Ferrari hired him but he also proved he was a winner. Montezemolo welded the group into an effective fighting unit, rather than the ‘Palace Intrigues’ of Maranellos’ past holding the Scuderia back …

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Clay Regazzoni, Ferrari 312T, Nurburgring 1975. DNF engine. (Pinterest)

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Enzo Ferrari, Luca Di Montezemolo & Niki Lauda, test session at Fiorano 1974 (Pinterest)

Photo Credits…

Pinterest unattributed, Werner Buhrer drawings