Skip to ContentEnergy Drinks All Red Bull Energy Drinks Discover and of course the one and only SuperSwede Ronnie Peterson are lined up side-by-side on the grid The sound of Formula One engines roaring and with over 50 000 spectators lining the track The year is 1973 and the first-ever Swedish Formula One Grand Prix is about to get under way at the Scandinavian Raceway in Anderstorp to believe that this piece of land was a bog five years earlier Maybe even more unbelievable is that there is no big federation or state with endless amounts of cash behind the build but three local men with big racing dreams This is the story of Scandinavia’s one and only Formula One race circuit A mesmerising journey that includes parking international airplanes in gravel pits famous race drivers playing “catch me if you can” on Swedish gravel roads and probably the bravest racing club in the world The Formula One Grand Prix back in 1973 on Scandinavian Raceway 50 years later an F1 driver once again puts wheels to tarmac on the track Who could have imagined aGrand Prix with the Swedish King in Anderstorp Bertil and Sven making dreams come true like it's no big deal at all "F1 in the 70s was a growth era & played a huge part in its development" Coulthard remembers the 70s and is honoured to drive the track once again The video shoot at Anderstorp was like stepping back to the 70s A tribute to the 70s and all the drivers pushing the sport The walls around the paddock are clouded with memories of the old days A big moment for motorsport enthusiasts in Sweden A legend on historic Swedish motorsport soil The Tyrrell P34 and the Brabham BT46B — both one-time winners If you are reading this column on or shortly after the date on which it was published — Tuesday June 18 2024 — you may or may of course not be interested to know that I am in Sweden enjoying a long weekend of ‘R and R’ with my husband and we have enjoyed very pleasant day trips to Uppsala and Gävle and punctual Swedish high-speed railway system so to do Mercedes’ Juan Manuel Fangio leads Stirling Moss at Råbelövsbanan in 1955 for its layout has changed very little since it was opened in 1968 In addition to its having hosted six F1 grands prix but it is now used predominantly for club racing and road car testing clockwise racetrack of 2.501 miles (4.025km) comprising eight challenging turns in its F1 heyday it tended to churn out results that bucked the form book which doubles as a runway for the nearby private airport and the fact that most of its corners are banked including a notoriously tricky 210-degree right-hander which was always a problem at Anderstorp owing to the many banked turns Hulme had chosen Goodyears of a harder compound but they had not looked like winning until the F1 circus had rolled into Anderstorp Tyrrell returned to winning form at Sweden ’74 although the car was never seen in a championship-status F1 grand prix again The 1979 Swedish Grand Prix never happened. Why not? Because, tragedy upon tragedy, the country’s two F1 drivers, Ronnie Peterson and Gunnar Nilsson and the organisers feared that attendance levels would be decimated by the absence of that much loved home-grown talent So that was the end of the Anderstorp F1 dream and no Swedish Grand Prix has been run since Brabham BT46B ‘fan car’ would ultimately be the final ever winner of the Swedish Grand Prix but Colin Chapman’s once-dominant outfit was at its then-lowest ebb: in 1975 it had scored just nine points and in 1976 Andretti’s three pre-Anderstorp outings for Chapman had resulted in three retirements Gunnar Nilsson never had time to deliver on his F1 championship-winning potential Claimed by cancer after only two brilliant grand prix seasons the Lotus driver nevertheless continues to inspire although he was not aware of that at the time and he disputed it afterwards: “Man You don’t fool around.” It was academic in the end because his engine gave up after 45 of the 72 laps Amon had been running comfortably in fourth place and Scheckter’s Tyrrell team-mate Depailler whom he had been catching when sudden steering failure under braking for Startkurvan caused his Ensign to careen straight on through two rows of catch fencing into the guardrail behind To the surprise of the nearby photographers and marshals sort of taking in the fact that I wasn’t dead,” he said that evening the most frightening experience I’ve ever had.” So Scheckter and Depailler finished one-two for Tyrrell but this time it was a 12-wheeled Tyrrell one-two rather than an eight-wheeled one The Tyrrell P34 would never win an F1 grand prix again because the FIA long ago mandated that all F1 cars must have four wheels “We’d have been better off if we’d junked the six-wheeler and carried on with the 007 [the four-wheeled Tyrrell in which he had won F1 grands prix in both 1974 and 1975],” he once told me whereas I looked at things more dispassionately I didn’t like the way it behaved under braking So you had a 50 per cent greater chance of a lock-up you have to ever so slightly ease up on the brake pedal to get the locked wheel turning again I was very happy to be back on four wheels the following year Scheckter scores first and last victory for a six-wheeled F1 car in 1976 at Anderstorp I interviewed Ken Tyrrell in his eponymous F1 team’s famously ramshackle headquarters in Ockham for Tyrrell was still an F1 entrant at that time but I could not resist chucking him a question about the P34 “Did that car give you a lot of pleasure?” I ventured “Oh yes,” he replied, with his trademark hearty guffaw, “and you’ll like this story. After Sweden 1976, when we finished one-two with the six-wheelers, Luca di Montezemolo, who was the very young team manager at Ferrari, came up to me after the race, went down on his knees, and clasped his hands together. ‘Ken, that was absolutely fantastic,’ he said. Two years ago, at Imola It was just a bit difficult for the now president of Ferrari to reminisce about going down on his knees to praise Ken Tyrrell McLaren stole the show at the 2025 Miami Grand Prix with a dominant 1-2 finish that left rivals trembling Here are the key takeaways from a pivotal weekend in Formula 1 The Miami Grand Prix weekend was action packed both on and off the track Here's a look at what you may have missed from the event McLaren crushed the opposition in the Miami Grand Prix with Piastri taking his third straight win in a race that looked like Norris's to lose Mark Hughes answers the main questions from the sixth round of the 2025 season Piastri wins the Miami GP to take his third consecutive victory to consolidate his championship lead ahead of Norris Metropolitan Cleopas of Sweden and All Scandinavia accompanied by Archimandrite Sosipatros Stephanoudis visited the flock of the Mother Church of Constantinople in the Swedish cities of Anderstorp and Jönköping the two clergymen visited the premises of the Anderstorp Hellenic Association and met with its members an Archdiocesan Divine Liturgy was celebrated in Anderstorps Kyrka presided over by Metropolitan Cleopas of Sweden with the participation of Father Sosipatros the Metropolitan mentioned the following: “We have already completed the second week since Easter and today we are among you on another pastoral tour to proclaim to you the joyful message of the Resurrection and to rejoice in our gathering at the Divine Liturgy addressing His disciples and the crowds who had come to hear Him that people should not immerse themselves in concepts for the sake of securing only material food Today’s Gospel passage was preceded by the multiplication of the loaves to feed the people these people are hungry and ask for new loaves but not to worry about the necessities of life the Lord is not forbidding the acquisition of necessary food in an honorable manner and with work (2 Thess but only calling our attention to the necessity of not making the things of this world the main object of our concern He emphasized that we should take care of “the food we eat In the same way he refers to the dialogue with the Samaritan woman “if you knew… he would give you the water of life” and goes on to say that this food is provided by the Son of Man he states the ultimate purpose to which this food leads since it contributes to our enjoyment of future goods These future goods are offered to us by the Son of Man Let us also keep intact the spiritual seal we received on the day of our baptism through the Holy Chrism and let us proclaim the greatness of God wherever we are I would like to thank those who helped prepare today’s Divine Liturgy the president and members of the local Hellenic Association and all of you who have joined us to experience the joy of the Resurrection and exchange festive greetings” the Metropolitan went to the local cemetery where he sang a Trisagion for the repose of the Greek Orthodox who rested there the Metropolitan and his entourage again visited the local Grekiska föreningen Anderstorp and were received by the president of the association a solemn Divine Liturgy was celebrated at the Parish of Saints Constantine & Helen in the city of Jönköping The Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate approved on October 4th the canonization of Eldress Sophia Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew traveled by air to Antalya the Patriarchate of Jerusalem solemnly celebrated the Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women... Archbishop Elpidophoros of America celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the Monastery of the Theotokos.. it was announced that two Roman Catholic institutions in Bavaria have decided to jointly.. (function() { window.mc4wp = window.mc4wp || { listeners: [] cb) { window.mc4wp.listeners.push( { event : evt callback: cb } ); } } }})(); © 2023 OrthodoxTimes.com - All rights reserved Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website These cookies do not store any personal information Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website New venues in expanded new-look DTM schedule for 2020… Anderstorp and Monza have been added to next year’s expanded DTM schedule while a “very exciting” TBA date is still listed for May Scandinavian Raceway Anderstorp will host the series on June 12-14 in its first visit to Sweden Six editions fo the Swedish Grand Prix took place at Anderstorp during the 1970s while legendary Formula 1 venue Monza becomes the fourth Italian DTM circuit kicking off at Zolder on April 24-26 and finishing at Hockenheimring on Oct Nürburgring and Hockenheimring means that the series will have four events in its home country of Germany while expanding around Europe Additional returning events at Brands Hatch and Assen mean that DTM will visit at least six countries: Germany The location for the TBA May 29-31 date will be announced ahead of this year’s finale at Hockenheimring next month “The 2020 DTM calendar reflects our ambition to achieve both growth and stability,” said ITR CEO Achim Kostron “We’ll continue to race at Germany’s most popular motorsport venues while also increasing the series’ presence across Europe “We want to continue growing awareness of DTM in key European markets – so racing at legendary British and Italian racetracks such as Brands Hatch and Monza really allows us to reach those national audiences our first visit to Sweden next spring will unlock another new and important motorsport market “While the scope of the calendar keeps growing we’ve remained loyal to our fans in Germany the location of both Zolder and Assen means they’re both within easy geographical reach for many German fans “We feel like we’ve got a perfect blend of venues and dates and we’re already getting excited about the new season.” Kostron described the identity of the TBA venue as “one more surprise in store” claiming that “it’s very exciting” He is a graduate of Politics and International Relations Ayhancan Guven captures first victory of DTM career in Oschersleben Race 2.. Lucas Auer ends lengthy DTM win drought with victory in Oschersleben Race 1.. Jules Gounon looking ahead to first full season in DTM with Winward Racing.. Ricardo Feller sets expectations ahead of Land Motorsport's debut DTM season.. the single-seater motor racing championship for female drivers only has announced an initial list of six races for 2020 the initial six races form part of the 2020 W Series championship and also include Monza “I don’t yet know a huge amount about the newly built St Petersburg circuit but the DTM drivers who’ve visited it have been very complimentary about it The St Petersburg event will be run on the newly built 4.086km Igora Drive which was developed by Formula 1 circuit designer Hermann Tilke The former Formula 1 circuit Anderstorp Raceway measures a similar 4.025km in length will take W Series to the Nordics for the first time,” said W Series CEO Catherine Bond Muir “Both Sweden and Russia represent important new territories for W Series “We’ll announce the complete 2020 W Series championship calendar as and when we’ve finalized it.” Rickard Rydell claimed a stunning last gasp victory in front of his home fans on his World Touring Car Championship return at Anderstorp the similar wet-to-dry conditions to that of the first race benefited Rydell who started on slick tyres and picked off his wet-shod rivals as conditions improved to snatch the win off Nicola Larini Rickard Rydell claimed a stunning last gasp victory in front of his home fans on his World Touring Car Championship return at Anderstorp Denying Larini his first win with Chevrolet the result nonetheless makes the team by far the most successful of the weekend as they conquered yet more tricky conditions around the Swedish circuit Another exciting race full of overtaking as the conditions had different effects on the drivers cars the order right to the final corner was by no means a foregone conclusion Rydell only coming into play in the final laps as his slick Yokohama tyres began to prosper along the drying line those leading were suffering on their overheating tyres who had benefited in the first race by wearing slick tyres in drying conditions It all played into the hands of Rydell who got the jump on Larini and Menu who had started on the front row and led almost all the way on the final lap and secure a famous win on his one-off appearance in the Lacetti Larini finished second for another strong result that improves his championship standing his form coming on a weekend that saw the title contenders really struggle to make an impression Augusto Farfus's ninth place proving BMW's best result from the two races the Swiss driver also now moving into outside title contention with third position Coronel claimed his second fourth place finish of the weekend to bolster his championship points another driver to take advantage of a drying track to make up places in the final laps to fifth in his slick-shod Alfa Romeo while Robert Dahlgren was an impressive eighth in his bio-fuel Volvo S60 although the point is awarded to ninth place Farfus as Dahlgren's car is only homologated to national specifications Jorg Muller still leads despite his pointless weekend Farfus' single marker placing him just a point behind him in the standings while Andy Priaulx is another point further back their points haul putting them to within ten and 13 points off the Muller in the standings and now ahead of the best SEAT © Crash Media Group Ltd 2025.The total or partial reproduction of text photographs or illustrations is not permitted in any form Get quick access to your favorite articles Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers Make your voice heard with article commenting Many countries around the globe have a rich motorsport landscape that is little-known beyond their borders The well-established domestic touring car championships of Brazil and Argentina visit some truly superb tracks – anyone remember the Potrero de los Funes Circuit around a reservoir that briefly appeared as part of the FIA GT1 world championship – that capture the imagination and make worthy bucket list additions Sweden has no shortage of its own hidden gem circuits too And having raced around the world in sportscars and single-seaters including a doomed attempt at cracking IndyCar it’s one of his local tracks that three-time Swedish Touring Car Championship winner Fredrik Ekblom choses as his favourite The success he enjoyed at Falkenberg is clearly a large part of Ekblom’s reason for picking out the 1.145-mile track as Ekblom scored eight wins there in touring cars between 1999 and 2017 across Super Touring With laptimes around 41 seconds in Super Touring and only a shade more than that in the subsequent eras getting into a rhythm is vitally important Ekblom says the flow of the circuit “suits me well” and allowed him to use a very specific set-up that made use of his experience of racing Stateside in Indy Lights you can do the set-up so it’s more a little bit like an oval-style,” says Ekblom who made just three IndyCar starts in as many years between 1994 and 1996 including a solitary oval appearance at Michigan What could have been: How a future tin-top ace was thwarted in IndyCar aside from the slow right-left chicane added in 2004 which opens the lap and is also the most obvious overtaking spot Having experienced UK circuits when he finished runner-up in the 1991 British Formula 3000 championship Ekblom reckons it is comparable to Thruxton where keeping up momentum is similarly crucial for laptimes “It has a quick corner on the back which is really nice,” he says when asked for the British circuit it is most similar to Ekblom’s oval racing approach clearly paid dividends although success at Falkenberg eluded him in 1998 as he won the STCC title in his first attempt aboard a West Coast Racing BMW After finishing second to Jens Edman’s Flash Engineering BMW in that title-winning campaign he got the ball rolling in 1999 by leading from the front after poleman Thomas Johansson’s Ford missed the start with engine trouble upon switching to Kristoffersson-run Audis Ekblom mustered a best finish of third at the Bergagard track as Eje Elgh Nissan driver Tommy Rustad’s race two victory helped the eventual champion to force his way back into the fight Autosport’s correspondent Tege Tornvall reported that his “domination of the series was halted thanks in part to the introduction of rolling starts which negated the advantage of his four-wheel drive Audi A4 Quattro” After two years away from the domestic series racing in the American Le Mans Series and then the European Touring Car Championship Ekblom returned to the STCC for 2003 with the Kristoffersson Audi squad and rediscovered winning form at Falkenberg by converting pole to a straightforward victory He then took third from the reversed grid race and added a runner-up finish in the STCC’s second visit to the track that year in its usual mid-July slot which helped him to edge Jan ‘Flash’ Nilsson to a second STCC title Ekblom's 2003 efforts prior to the introduction of the complex to slow the cars down underlined that overtaking was still possible for ambitious drivers A third Falkenberg STCC win arrived in 2004 when he capitalised on a puncture for Richard Goransson’s BMW and then took Tomas Engstrom’s Honda Civic and Ekblom was a winner at the track again in 2005 – the first season he finished outside the top three in the STCC standings A switch back to the West Coast BMW team for 2007 yielded his third STCC crown He finished second to Kristoffersson Audi driver Thed Bjork at Falkenberg and went one better in 2008 although lost out on the title to fellow Orebro native Goransson by just seven points Ekblom reckons West Coast’s 320si E90 was the best-suited machine he ever had at the track – and that year BMWs locked out the top four places as a new track surface caused problems for several rivals Ekblom enjoyed enormous success at the Falkenberg track over many years and different rule sets “You have to place your car and be early on the power in certain places and you gain the whole back side and things like that,” he says Ekblom’s return to the Kristoffersson team which was developing a biogas-powered VW Sciorocco for 2009 meant he didn’t score another Falkenberg podium until 2011 by which time the series had merged with the Danish championship to form the Scandianavian Touring Car Championship But it was on the coveted top step that he stood after seeing off Goransson and Chevrolet driver Rickard Rydell – who pipped him to the crown by two points A fourth Swedish tin-top title for Ekblom arrived in 2012 when the STCC was split apart Ekblom joining the Polestar Volvo squad in the breakaway TTA Racing League Insight: When Sweden tried to create its own DTM this time with the STCC running to TTA rules and Ekblom took a brace of podiums before a seventh Falkenberg win arrived in 2014 after he’d been taken off by Goransson in race one He took second at Falkenberg in 2015 before heading to the World Touring Car Championship with Volvo in 2016 But there was still time for another Falkenberg win in 2017 the STCC’s first year running to TCR rules as Ekblom held off eventual champion Robert Dahlgren’s PWR SEAT aboard a Kristoffersson VW Golf before retiring from racing at the end of 2018 There aren't many left-handers at Falkenberg which allowed Ekblom to tap into his oval racing knowledge when devising set-ups From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport In order to keep delivering our expert journalism we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker Register | Sign in W Series has announced an initial list of six races for 2020 including new fixtures at St Petersburg and Anderstorp all six to be run in conjunction with DTM The W Series race at St Petersburg will be run on a newly built circuit called Igora Drive (pictured) Anderstorp Raceway is coincidentally almost exactly the same length – 2.501 miles (4.025km) – but it is by contrast a historic circuit having been built in 1968 and having hosted the F1 Swedish Grand Prix from 1973 to 1978 It has also been used over the years by Grand Prix motorcycles and World Superbikes World Touring Car Championship cars and FIA GT Championship cars "We at W Series are thrilled to announce two exciting and important new countries in which W Series will race in 2020: Russia and Sweden," said Catherine Bond Muir will take W Series to the Nordics for the first time a region that's home to our Finnish driver Emma Kimilainen who was one of the stars of the 2019 W Series championship as well as one of our new-for-2020 drivers our recently announced Norwegian driver Ayla Agren will be the home fixture for the youngest driver in the 2020 W Series championship which is also in Russia albeit 266 miles [428km] north-east of St Petersburg "Both Sweden and Russia represent important new territories for W Series "We'll announce the complete 2020 W Series championship calendar as and when we've finalised it." "I don't yet know a huge amount about the newly built St Petersburg circuit having never been there before," admitted Dave Ryan "but the DTM drivers who've visited it have been very complimentary about it finishing with an exciting uphill final sector consisting of a series of quick-fire corners "By contrast I know a lot about Anderstorp having been a member of the McLaren Formula 1 team when we raced there in the 1970s including the very long 180-degree Karusell right-hander and it often therefore delivered unpredictable results the two six-wheeled Tyrrells of Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler finished first and second having not looked like winning any other Formula 1 Grands Prix that year which makes Anderstorp unique in having hosted a Formula 1 Grand Prix won by a six-wheeled car And a couple of years later Niki Lauda won at Anderstorp in the spectacular Brabham-Alfa Romeo BT46B 'fan car' which dominated the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix but never raced in Formula 1 again thereby winning its one and only Formula 1 Grand Prix "I'm not going to be so bold as to promise that W Series will make racing history to quite that extent in Russia or Sweden next year but we're absolutely delighted to be able to announce that W Series will be racing on two such exciting circuits." The initial six races are: St Petersburg (Russia): May 29-30Anderstorp (Sweden): June 12-13Monza (Italy): June 26-27Norisring (Germany): July 10-11Brands Hatch (UK): August 22-23Assen (Netherlands): September 4-5 Miami Grand Prix in Words, Stats and Pictures Another restructuring of management at Audi Hamilton frustration goes public Miami Grand Prix: Race team notes - McLaren Red Bull protest fails Miami Grand Prix: Post Race press conference Sainz gets a warning Miami Grand Prix: Race team notes - Williams Miami Grand Prix: Race team notes - Alpine Miami Grand Prix: Race team notes - Red Bull W Series announces 18 drivers for second season W Series could support F1 races Click to go to the main galleries section or Register for a Pitpass ID to have your say Please note that all posts are reactively moderated and must adhere to the site's posting rules and etiquette would you like to be the first to have your say Delicious Digg Facebook Reddit StumbleUpon Twitter Vintage Road Racing European Championship: the opening round in Sweden Pictures by www.classicmotofoto.com – Richard Peers-Jones #33 Colin Sleigh #29 & Bjorn Gunnarsson #74 On 28th-29th June competitors in the FIM Europe Vintage Road Race Championship gathered at the former Grand Prix circuit Anderstorp for the opening round of the season The weather was perfect all weekend for racing with temperatures in the 20’s and a dry track Practice and qualifying went without any major problems for the FIME riders who all qualified In Saturday’s races Lars Sanberg made it a double success when he took wins in both class 5 and 6 Other class winners were Tanya Hentschel (Class 2) Hans Pallesen (Class 3) Paul Allender (Class 7a) and Richard Peers-Jones (Class 7b) but in the new class 9b all four riders had problems and did not start testing the reliability of the bikes and it showed in the results Tanya repeated her Class 2 success of Saturday and you could see how delighted she was as her Aermacchi crossed the line In the Class 7a race the Yamahas of Paul Allender and Sven Erik Johanson only managed two laps between them and didn’t trouble the timekeepers after that leaving Jurgen Riedel and his Honda to pick up the 25 points There was a superb battle for the lead between Richard Peers-Jones and Colin Sleigh in Class 7b until Sleigh’s 250 ran out of brakes at half distance and retired with a little help from his Minnovation engined G50 pulled out a comfortable lead in Sunday’s Class 5 race then settled into a consistent rhythm to come home ten seconds in front of Franz Glauser in second place The final race of the day was for the new Class 9b and was won by Peter Howarth The Championship moves on to the UK at Donington for the second round The final round will be in September at Pau-Arnos | Copyright 2025 FIM Europe | Terms of use - Privacy statement | Denny Hulme took his frist win of the season driving for McLaren There are some people who think that Grand Prix racing should be made more uniform than it is and bemoan the fact that all circuits do not have aircraft landing strips and motels incorporated in their design Europe is not uniform in everything and each country still possesses some variation so that although the cast for a Grand Prix does not vary much from race to race With Scandinavia now joining in the Grand Prix circus we had the extremes in contrast by going from the Grand Prix round the streets of Monte Carlo arid waste on which the Swedes have built the Scandinavian Raceway on the edge of the little country town of Anderstorp though from the circuit there is not a house to be seen incorporating the Anderstorp airfield runway in the main straight with the rest of the 4.018-kilometre circuit twisting and turning in a series of uniform right-angle corners and hairpins with the start and finish and the timekeepers at one end of the wiggly bit and the pits and paddock at the other end This came about because the CSI inspected the circuit in 1968 and would not sanction the start line being on the short straight where the pits were demanding that it should be on the longer straight on the other side of the circuit By this time the vast tarmac paddock had been laid and the pits built so the race “control centre” was set up remote from the “nerve centre” and it seemed to work The “cast” that journeyed to Sweden by boat plane and road was little changed from Monaco these being Merzario in the second Ferrari Galli who withdrew from further active participation on the eve of the race there being no sign of the Ensign once again Of the regulars Team Lotus were back to full strength with two cars each for Fittipaldi and Peterson 006 and 006/2 with the first number in wedge-nose the McLaren team had their three M23 cars for Hulme and Revson the Ecclestone Brabham team their two BT42 models for Reutemann and Wilson Fittipaldi The BRM team were reduced to three cars after Beltoise crashed his at Monaco The UOP-Shadow team had built another new car and Team Surtees had the three cars they took to Monaco With the loss of Nanni Galli the Williams team had a spare car for Ganley and both cars had been converted to a single front radiator layout instead of the two radiators one on each side just behind the front wheels The March force comprised Jarier with the works car Beuttler with the stock-broker’s car with a new oil radiator layout at the back and Reine WiseII with the car Purley had used at Monaco it being rebuilt with new body panels and painted bright yellow like the Beuttler car Graham Hill completed the list with his Shadow Ronnie Peterson took his fourth pole of the season for Lotus In total there were four practice sessions and presumably the constructors were being paid sufficient money for there were no boycotts or complaints of “too much practice” and the practice took place over Friday and Saturday before race day It was held in early morning and late afternoon on the first day and early morning and lunch-time on the second day with breaks during each session if any cars became derelict round the circuit and needed collecting Considering it was all supposed to be practice time the troubles were rather more abundant than was reasonable The UOP-Shadow team started the ball rolling on Friday morning when Oliver’s Cosworth engine just back from an expensive Cosworth rebuild and Follmer crashed his brand new car into the catch fence at the end of the pit straight and crinkled the monocoque Wilson Fittipaldi barely completed a lap before the engine in his Brabham sheered its oil-pump drive which ruined the bearings and put him out for the rest of the morning sliding round the constant-radius hairpins very prettily and making fastest time who was naturally the star and hero of his own Grand Prix event For the second practice Cevert took over the modified Tyrrell and appeared to like it as much as the standard one but Peterson was getting into the groove and made fastest time in 72/R6 and second fastest time in his spare car so that one could say in all truth that he dominated practice Among those who were keeping up well was Reutemann setting off in his Shadow which had been straightened out as best as could be done in the paddock and promptly going off into the sand again Oliver and Wilson Fittipaldi joined in now and Jarier dropped out of the running when the crown-wheel and pinion broke in the Hewland gearbox on his March while Revson’s McLaren wrecked its gearbox On Saturday very few people made much improvement as the circuit seemed to be getting polished and slippery and it had never had such high speeds or hard use before Pace bending his Surtees when the left-rear wheel broke off and Regazzoni walked back to the pits when his BRM engine blew up Beuttler got all crossed up coming into the pit straight and bent the front of his March on the barriers and Fittipaldi had a rear hub carrier break on his spare Lotus Frank Williams let the Danish F5000 driver Tom Belso have a go in GaIli’s !so-Marlboro and Cevert and Stewart improved their times in the standard Tyrrell cars Ickx was making steady progress with the lone Ferrari but somehow the small Ferrari effort looked a bit lost and lonely In the final session Stewart decided to try the modified Tyrrell in view of the speed Cevert had done with it So the pedals were all altered so that the little Scot could drive it After a mere handful of laps he returned to his normal car and the experimental one was put away there not being time to reset everything back for the long-legged Cevert so the Frenchman continued in his standard Tyrrell In the Lotus team there were some minor panics when first Fittipaldi stopped out on the straight in his spare car the temporarily repaired rear end having given way again and then Peterson was reported to be in trouble in his spare car but it proved to be merely a shortage of petrol As practice drew to a close Ganley spun off into the sand and got everything clogged up necessitating an engine change and general dismantling to get rid of all the sand Belso had another brief try in the spare Williams car and fewer people still made any improvement to their times even though they were all flogging round to the bitter end The timekeepers were using a clever computer to produce results and it was programmed merely to remember and record each cars best lap and to discard any slower ones so that it threw away all the times that showed no improvement on the “remembered” time which left us with only the cumulative best time for each driver along with the cumulative number of laps each driver had completed Stewart being top of the list with a total of 74 laps in 006/2 Tyrrell whilst Wisell ran him close with a total of 71 laps and most drivers managed to complete over half a race during the two days while Peterson did 32 laps in Lotus R6 and 42 laps in Lotus R8 The cars pull away at the start of the race While the weather had been good during the two days of practice it was really superb on race day and a crowd of 55,000 packed the Raceway one of the largest crowds at any sporting event ever held in Sweden honouring the event with his Royal presence on Sunday morning there was a short test session particularly useful for those teams who had been rebuilding cars or installing new engines for Ganley had the throttles stick open and crashed IR/01 while Fittipaldi had oil leaking out of the rear main bearing seal on his new Cosworth engine so the back end had to be stripped off and a new seal fitted A national Formula Three race and a saloon-car race filled in the morning and then the Grand Prix cars were wheeled out to the pits to prepare for a 1.30 p.m The scheme was that the cars should do warm-up lap and then take up their “dummy-grid” positions in front of the pits and when everyone was ready they would set off in formation round the circuit to the starting line nothing had happened for GPDA said there were too many photographers on the edge of the track the organisers then said they were in a dangerous place anyway and the GPDA (in the shape of President Hulme) said that where the organisers wanted the photographers to go was even more dangerous Eventually a compromise was reached and the warm-up lap took place during which Wisell put the brakes on and his hired March broke the left lower front wishbone mounting and he returned to the paddock with the wheel at funny angle The remaining twenty cars left without him and Peterson in Lotus 72/R6 led them round to the start where they all paused briefly and were then off with a shattering roar Eighteen of them got round the first corner while Graham Hill got his Shadow on the dirt and the throttle slides got all jammed up He got going later but was then plagued with electrical troubles As the nineteen cars roared round the first lap it was the two black and gold Lotus cars leading the two blue Tyrrell cars On the second lap Wilson Fittipaldi got crossed-up at the second hairpin and went off into the rough and wrecked the nose and radiators of his Brabham with lap times two to three seconds slower than in practice but the leaders going as fast as they could with full petrol tanks and the circuit in race-day condition Peterson led Fittipaldi by a short distance while Cevert passed Stewart and led his team leader in pursuit of the Lotus pair and Hulme passed Reutemann and tailed the two blue Tyrrells and the order behind the pace-setters was Ickx (Ferrari) the BRM having tyre troubles which ruined its handling nothing much happened for a while and they all went round and round At 15 laps Beltoise stopped at the pits in response to a signal for his mechanics could see oil leaking from the tank; a rivet holding a baffle had broken so the hole was bunged-up with a Pop-rivet and the Frenchman was on his way again Monotony now settled in as the two Lotus cars led the two Tyrrell cars all their Cosworth engines giving equal power and all their Goodyear tyres providing equal grip Reutemann’s car was vibrating badly and he could not keep up and the two Surtees drivers were very unhappy with their Firestone tyres while Follmer’s Shadow was handling like a camel still being a bit out of line after its practice accidents On lap 33 the monotony was relieved slightly when Stewart felt he had followed his team-mate long enough this move being prompted by the fact that they were about to lap some of the faster tail-enders and Cevert is not too good in fast traffic Sure enough Stewart pulled away and began to reduce the gap to the Lotus pair who were still circulating more or less nose-to-tail While this was happening Hulme was having a small private drama for his throttles stuck open and he hastily switched off the ignition coasting along still in gear; tentatively he switched on again expecting the engine to fire again on full throttle Then he realised the throttles had shut themselves again and pressing the accelerator he found everything was normal Stewart closed up steadily on the Lotus pair and complete stalemate set in as the three cars circulated nose-to-tail each driver waiting for the others to make a mistake or for some mechanical thing to go wrong and Hulme was closing up on him pretty rapidly The rest of the runners were trailing along By 55 laps Hulme was up with Cevert and the leading trio were unchanged it being difficult to see how it was going to change Pace had stopped for more tyres and was now lapped Hailwood had given up the unequal struggle Oliver retired when his Shadow broke the inner mounting of the lower right rear wishbone and at 58 laps Beltoise pulled off on to the side of the track when his BRM engine blew up The leading trio lapped Revson and then it was Cevert’s turn to lap the American’s McLaren and in the scrabble he somehow got held up and HuIme went by both of them It was a neat bit of team work by the two McLaren drivers which was more than Cevert could cope with the Ferrari having been pretty uninspiring all weekend and then Lauda ran low on fuel and had to stop for more one of his tank breather flap-valves playing up and letting petrol out as well as vapour and a few laps later Ganley also stopped for petrol as his mixture control had slackened off and gone to full rich With eleven laps to go Fittipaldi began to drop back from Peterson as his brakes began to weaken due to oil from the gearbox getting on the rear discs while Hulme passed the slowing Lotus and took third place on lap 70 On the next lap Fittipaldi had lost all contact with the leaders and continued by using the gearbox to slow the car and on the next lap Reutemann was past the Lotus Being low on oil and being overstressed when slowing the car the gearbox was beginning to break up and Fittipaldi was struggling desperately to keep going to the finish Meanwhile his team-mate was in trouble for his left rear tyre was losing pressure and going soft making it very difficult on right-hand bends Winner Hulme lifts Peterson’s arm in a gracious move to indicate the latter’s worthiness as a winner after he finished a close second The UOP-Shadow team took the Team Shambles Trophy away from Team Surtees We wonder if Regazzoni is beginning to think that money isn’t the be-all and end-all of joining a team The Marlboro PR gang really went into action to get Tom Belso into the spare Williams lso-Marlboro or size or something as the attempt fizzled out The Tyrrell team may have described Stewart’s trouble as a brake problem but it looked suspiciously like a design failure Suggestions that Follmer’s next car is going to be built with a “crinkle” in the monocoque are untrue If the professional photographers failed to take any photographs of Hulme winning the race it would be poetic justice after his pre-race belly-aching Jacques Laffite took his debut win for Ligier Sweden is not the most exciting country to visit and the Scandinavian Raceway at Anderstorp is not the most exciting of circuits but even so the Formula One “circus” enacted a cracking good race Throughout practice Team Lotus had continued the form they showed in Belgium and though Andretti was not fastest in all three sessions due to a tyre “nonsense” while team-mate Nilsson was seventh fastest Alongside the Lotus on the front row was John Watson in a brand new Brabham-Alfa Romeo BT45; while close behind in row two were Hunt in the McLaren M26 which is improving visibly and Scheckter in the second of the Wolf cars Not so long ago everything in Formula One was “democratically equal” as some of the hierarchy behind the Constructors Association would have it but recently there have been chinks in the armour of this “equality” which was artificial and dull anyway with the result that the overall scene has been changing for the good Practice in Sweden made it blatantly obvious that those dull days are over and Formula One is getting back to being a serious activity once again; almost Grand Prix The first signs were the appearance of three special Cosworth engines McLaren and Tyrrell: now there is a special Cosworth engine that is a bit more special than the others Between these two types of Super-Cosworth is yet another one Once the “ultimate” Cosworth engine has been proved or rather everyone who is capable of doing justice to it The interesting thing about all this engine development being done at the Northampton factory is that the object is to combat the ever-increasing challenge from Ferrari Matra and Alfa Romeo and their 12-cylinder engines (BRM have a 12-cylinder engine but Cosworth do not consider it a challenge) Wolf and McLaren is the continually improving Alfa Romeo engine Added to all this is the question of Goodyear tyres They certainly used to be “equal for everyone” though not everyone was able to design their suspension and handling around the fixed datums of the “issue” tyres from Wolverhamptom There was almost as big a variety of Goodyear tyres available in Sweden for the top teams as there used to be in the days of competition from Firestone and Dunlop but just in case some appears on the horizon in France (Michelin) the Wolverhampton firm are getting prepared Formula One is getting very interesting again and nobody who is worthy of support from the firms of Cosworth and Goodyear are lacking it For sixty-nine and a half laps of the flat Anderstorp raceway because all those things have degrees of “rightness” and the clever thing that Colin Chapman does is to mould them into a homogeneous package; and that is where a lot of teams fall down their total packages are not wholly homogeneous they have an important end or two hanging out The sixty-ninth lap was the downfall for the Lotus; it ran out of petrol the fuel-injection adjustment had vibrated gradually from “Weak” to “Rich” and the range of movement is just sufficient to affect the fuel consumption without dramatically affecting the performance While Andretti had been “cruising away” towards a devastating victory there had been a battle going on behind that can only be described as Homeric leaving the Brabham-Alfa Romeo with Scheckter’s Wolf snapping at its tail Hunt was working like never before to fend off Depailler Jarier and Regazzoni were having a good old ding-dong and then came Jack Oliver standing-in for Riccardo Patrese who was away at a Formula Two race actually staying ahead of Lauda’s Ferrari The Austrian was very disgruntled with the whole Ferrari scene and it was showing in his driving Home-hero Ronnie Peterson broke Swedish hearts retired early On lap 30 Scheckter messed the whole thing up by trying to dive through on the inside of Watson’s Brabham on a left-hander the Wolf slid out wide and there was a lot of dodging about by those following close behind This left Andretti with more lead than ever Watson was back in seventh place before he could recover and Hunt was now second followed by Depailler The battle between these five now got really serious for it was for second place and they were not just following each other round in an old-fashioned Formula One procession and some of the back-markers who got lapped by this bunch must have had second thoughts about getting involved in the serious end of Formula One While this battle was at its height Laffite picked off Mass then on the next lap he out-braked Depailler The little Frenchman was in a really ruthless mood and the Ligier-Matra was going superbly Once firmly into second place Laffite pulled away from the others and looked as though he might have closed up on Andretti but the Lotus driver had the situation well in hand Lafitte led home a joyous eight and a half seconds ahead of Mass and everyone was very pleased that it should be the French Ligier-Matra team that profited from the Lotus had luck In the struggle to retain second place the McLaren M26 had worn out its tyres and after slowing dramatically Hunt had been forced to stop on lap 53 for new tyres Finding he could not cope with Oliver’s Shadow Lauda had stopped to try different tyres and aerofoil settings Of Sweden’s own drivers Nilsson was right out of luck; early on Laffite shunted the Lotus up the rear which aviated the car and it damaged the nose on landing After a pit stop for repairs Nilsson rejoined the race in company with Andretti and the Lotus team-leader “towed” the young Swede along in his slip-stream for most of the race until the steering felt peculiar and he stopped with a suspected wheel bearing breaking up possibly due to the heavy landing after being punted by the Ligier the Tyrrell’s ignition failing very early on being quite unable to qualify with the BRM Laffite starts the celebrations after winning Stuck had driven too hard in the early stages and worn out his front tyres being forced to stop for a change eventually and Jones had started off well but ignition failure caused a couple of pits stops which put him well back Once again Keegan had to start the race in Rebacque’s Hesketh his own losing all its oil pressure on race morning Purley had gone very well in practice with his LEC but was slowed in the race by a brief stop to check the rear end of the car In practice Fittipaldi had a spectacular crash when his new Baldwin-designed car lost a rear wheel due to the axle shaft shearing Barry Sheene’s first world title looked like a walkover but his title-winning weekend was anything but during the afternoon of Sunday July 25 Barry Sheene rode over the finish line at Anderstorp both hands aloft waving V-for-victory signs to collect his first 500cc World Championship The Cockney whizz-kid had utterly dominated the 1976 season winning five of the six races he contested and taking second place in the other His final score of 87 points was 33 more than championship runner-up Tepi Lansivuori But Sheene’s historic Anderstorp weekend very nearly turned out to be a total disaster This was largely due to his factory Suzuki team in fact consisting of Sheene girlfriend Stephanie McLean and mechanic Don Mackay Japanese engineers rarely appeared at races that year because Suzuki had shut down their factory 500 effort at the end of 1975 The company had been sucked dry by the development costs of their first four-stroke road bike So Sheene’s 1976 crew was by no means slick and professional parts of the team were dangerously incompetent The trouble had started two weeks earlier during a Snetterton national meeting – always a good earner for Sheene – when he crashed heavily after his RG500’s brakes failed He was lucky to hobble away from the high-speed accident which left his number-one GP bike badly damaged Someone had forgotten to insert the brake pins which was completed just before Sheene and his crew sailed across the North Sea to Sweden Sheene was desperate to win the title at Anderstorp so he could dodge the final three races of the season all of them staged on the kind of lethal old-school circuits he hated: Imatra in Finland Brno in Czechoslovakia and the Nürburgring in West Germany In theory Anderstorp should’ve been a cruise “When we unloaded the bike in the paddock we noticed the wrong triple clamps were in my number-one machine,” wrote Sheene in his autobiography “And we had no record of the right pressures to use in the air forks and my number-two bike had been given the wrong gearbox Michelin had also sent me the wrong tyres.” The chaos didn’t diminish when practice started His number-one bike repeatedly oiled its plugs “I was way down in 15th position after the first session,” he recalled “Then we managed to discover that the choke cables were round the wrong side of the steering head And then he spotted another mechanic cock-up This time the brake pins had been fitted but one pad had been inserted back to front so it was no surprise that Sheene blew his top Sheene never publically blamed anyone for these serial and serious errors but suspicion usually fell on his ageing father he wouldn’t sack Franko because family was everything to him By Saturday his crew had put the worst behind them and Sheene was on the pace He ended qualifying second-fastest behind pole-sitter Lansivuori and ahead of fellow front-row starters Pat Hennen Six riders on the front row in those days; all of them stood next to their motorcycles He had one of the easiest rides of the season cruising home 34 seconds ahead of veteran privateer Jack Findlay who was riding an over-the-counter version of Sheene’s RG500 Aussie Findlay had made his GP debut in 1958 when Sheene was just seven years old son of famed Brooklands racer Charles Mortimer and the only man to score World Championship victories in 125cc Sheene celebrated his coronation as you would expect bike racing’s first rock and roll world champion to celebrate “We drank our way through 30 bottles of champagne – and at Swedish prices of £14 a bottle [around £95 in today’s money],” he wrote Sheene became a rich man on account of his racing talent and his star quality He was very much the prototype Valentino Rossi something Rossi recognised in his younger years The Briton’s first championship-winning season earned him something like £110,000 but at the time would’ve bought more than 60 four-bedroom houses which equates to around £10 million in today’s money He was also a standard-bearer for breaking down fusty upper-class barriers He was well-known for always wearing jeans especially when the occasion demanded something much more ‘respectable’ And he was famed for drilling a hole in the chin piece of his racing helmet so he could enjoy a cheeky fag while awaiting his next race it was his cigarette addiction that killed him in 2003 at the age of 52 Mat Oxley will be at this weekend’s Silverstone Classic event, signing copies of his book Stealing Speed on the Motor Sport magazine stand. Follow him on Twitter to keep up to date with timings Read Barry Sheene – Cockney Rebel, cover story from April 2013 Quartararo tested a more powerful Yamaha engine Honda tried MotoGP's first chassis parts incorporating ground-effect elements and Ducati worked on the problem that's hampering its factory riders There was hardly a dry eye in the house when Alex Márquez swept to his first MotoGP victory at sold-out Jerez on Sunday but there were plenty of worried faces in the factory Ducati garage MotoGP has never had a more unpopular technical regulation than its tyre-pressure rule which robbed Maverick Viñales of a podium finish in last week's Qatar GP But that's just one of many dozens of new rules over the past two decades – so what's the story Honda’s MotoGP project currently has huge momentum which is why it’s jumping early into the 2026/2027 rider market chasing Toprak Razgatlıoğlu and Pedro Acosta Niki Lauda continued his dominant form for Ferrari by taking another win Summer was in Sweden in a big way and a cloudless sky greeted everyone on Friday morning when practice began Since last year the pit area had been completely rebuilt to an “open-plan” arrangement covered by a large concrete walk-way for spectators and each car had its own space An access road started at the outside of the apex of the penultimate corner before the pits and this led into a lane behind the row of pits From there a driver turned right into his pit area and on leaving he continued on out the front and turned left into the exit road re-joining the circuit on the outside of the bend after the pits This was an excellent scheme which worked well in practice but prevented any possibility of a quick pit stop during the race the tortuous passage in and out wasting more time than was reasonable The morning was spent by most teams in settling in and there were three newcomers on the scene in the driver line-up while there was nothing new at all in the array of cars all the regular drivers being mounted on their usual machinery The Frank Williams team were starting all over again with two new drivers as Merzario was at long last out of favour and had “gone off on holiday” his place in FW/03 being taken by Damien Magee while Laffite was away at a European Championship Formula 2 race so his place in the 1975 Williams FW/04 was taken by Ian Scheckter In Graham Hill’s Embassy-sponsored team Migault was out of favour so his place was taken by Vern Schuppan in the latest Hill car The Hesketh team had all three of their cars out with Torsten Palm in 308/3 with the car covered in Polar Bears this being the advertising emblem of the Polar Caravan company of Sweden who were sponsoring the Grand Prix overall In the Brabham team there was an air of expectancy as Carlos Reutemann had cut his hair quite drastically so that his ears showed in an old-fashioned way and he was convinced this would change his luck More significant was the fact that he had appeared for breakfast happy and smiling and saying “What a beautiful day” This indicated that he was in a good mood and there was every chance of him being really on form He has a very deep and unpredictable nature and if he doesn’t feel right he drives in a mediocre fashion; if he feels good then he is one of the best The trouble is that no-one can find out what makes him feel good or bad Vittorio Brambilla surprised many by putting his March on pole From the start of practice Reutemann was obviously on form and you did not need a stop-watch to see that he was really trying Another driver who was quietly getting on with the job was Depailler while Jarier was driving with all the flair one expects from him It was accepted that Lauda would be among the front-runners for anyone using Cosworth V8 power is convinced that the Ferrari is far superior on sheer speed on superior braking and road-holding and to listen to some people you wonder why anyone goes on using the Cosworth DFV The question of Lauda’s driving ability never seems to come into it but Lauda himself believes that he is putting quite a lot of effort into the overall performance of the Ferrari and while he does not accept all the advantages claimed for the Ferrari in this first practice the combination of Lauda and the Ferrari was not quite good enough to beat Reutemann and his Brabham bracket was going to be the standard for anyone who wanted to be classed as an “Ace” After the performance by Vittorio Brambilla in the works March at Zolder everyone had been wondering if it had been significant or merely a flash-in-the-pan and when he didn’t appear in the “Ace” category at the end of the first practice Even the Ferrari team had got number 9 on one of the buttons on their electrical Heuer timing machine but began to think it was a waste of a good button The acknowledged “Ace” drivers like Fittipaldi Hunt and Pace were all busy trying to “tune” their cars for the geometric corners but not making much headway while others were quite simply having trouble Magee had hardly started off in the Williams before it died on him out on the circuit with the throttles stuck shut and he had to get help from his mechanics and Ian Scheckter was wishing he had brought his Tyrrell with him from South Africa as the new Williams car was not consistent in its feel which did not encourage him to go too near the limit Alan Jones had the throttles stick open on the Hesketh 308/1 and went off the circuit through a catch fence damaging the nose cowling and front suspension and the Hill team began a long saga of engine trouble Brise had the Cosworth V8 blow up in GH1/1 so he transferred to GH1/3 and Schuppan was relegated to the Lola HU3 which was being used as a spare car The Parnelli team were in trouble with a front brake shaft breaking apart from being on their own without a designer behind them as Maurice Phillipe had left the team but then the Ferrari team have always had to get along without their leader After the lunch interval Robin Herd and the March men began to show their hand which looked suspiciously like a serious attempt at Gamesmanship to upset the opposition First of all Brambilla went out in Lella Lombardi’s car which foxed a lot of people who saw it ahead of them and assumed that they would soon catch it up Brambilla’s normal car is painted in the bright orange of the Beta tool company who sponsor him so the sight of the white car going indecently fast must have unnerved some people When Brambilla got back into his own car he really turned on the steam and was continually putting in laps in the 1 min bracket which made the Ferrari timekeeper get excited and the other top teams get agitated It wasn’t that the March had suddenly become a Super-Car for its set-up was not necessarily any more nearer the ideal than anyone else’s but the driver was making full use of what he had got and not worrying unduly about the fine details as were drivers like Fittipaldi and Scheckter In the Lotus camp there was little joy for Peterson came in with the nose cowling knocked off 72/R9 and had to continue practice in the spare car The Ferrari team fiddled about with all their adjustments and made no improvement at all and they were particularly embarrassed by being unable to match the speed of Brambilla or even Scheckter in front of them was explainable if not acceptable but Brambilla was going to take some explaining away to the Commendatore who at 37 is an old man by Grand Prix standards is not known as the “Monza Gorilla” for nothing and after he had clocked a best lap of 1 mm car is good.” There was a lot of muttering up and down the pits about “understeer” but not very much about enthusiastic driving The morning “Aces” in the 1 min bracket were now looking like “Jacks” and there were one or two “Jokers” about as well Some of those who had got things adjusted nearly right while those who were still trying to get some sense from the adjustments got completely confused If it had been Lauda and the Ferrari who had got into the 1 min bracket there would have been a resigned air of “Oh well Saturday was cool and overcast and the “roundy-round” of chasing Brambilla started all over again not only by the Formula One cars but also by Formula Super-Vee conditions were not so good as previously and times generally were slower but even so it was still Brambilla and the March who were fastest the fire seemed to have gone out of Peterson Reutemann seemed to be deteriorating and Regazzoni was showing that there must be something in Lauda’s driving and it is not just the Ferrari that is so good John Watson was beginning to get to grips with the Surtees though its transition from understeer to oversteer was much too sudden and vicious so that Schuppan could start all over again with GH1/3 but practice had barely begun before the new engine had valve trouble and there was Brise being fitted into GH1/3 while poor Schuppan was watching the old Lola being prepared for him once more Torsten Palm was going quite well in the Hesketh until he lost control on the corner by the pits and hit the retaining wall so another Hesketh front-end had to be dug out of the spares box in the transporter During the lunch hour there was an air of gloom and despondency in the McLaren pit as nothing they did seemed to satisfy Fittipaldi the Tyrrell team were equally confused about how to make Scheckter happier (and faster) Team Lotus were wondering where Peterson’s fire had gone and in the Ferrari pit there was an air of incredible disbelief and a reluctance to telephone Modena In the March pit the mechanics seemed unable to believe that Father Christmas really does exist Robin Herd was chuckling over the discomforture of the other teams and Brambilla was awaiting further instructions from the boss The Brabham team had a straight-forward problem in that Reutemann’s car had broken a tooth off the crown-wheel in the final drive it being one of the teeth that is drilled across its root to improve the oil flow in their attempts to improve on Hewland’s design and prepared for the race Reutemann used the spare Brabham There was now only one hour left for honour to be achieved and some semblance of order on the starting grid to be finalised so away they all went on their Brambilla chase The March driver contented himself with a few averagely-fast laps though to some people they would have been heroic and then returned to the pits and left the car to join Robin Herd on one of the corners to watch the opposition in their attempts to first of all get below 1 min Whether the sight of the orange-overalled Italian standing watching gave the others a morale boost in the hope that the March had broken or added to their despair by the sheer confidence of March in not bothering to practise any more Depailler got on to some rough stuff and a stone punctured an oil radiator and unknowingly he carried on until all his oil was gone and the engine seized This caused a slight pause for cleaning and the retrieving of the Tyrrell and then it all started up again for a final 15-minutes Brambilla put his helmet and gloves on and sat in his March while Robin Herd stood by the pit wall and kept a watch on the opposition Watson and Andretti looked to be trying all they knew the two Shadow drivers in particular being good spectator value so Brambilla was content to sit quietly in his car until the chequered flag came out and Robin Herd indicated to him that it was all over In Belgium Brambilla and the March on the second row of the grid and in the lead of the race for a lap or two was all good fun but Brambilla and the March on pole position was not at all funny for the other teams Added to this was the knowledge that before leaving England for Sweden he had recorded an “unofficial” fastest-ever lap at Silverstone with the March test-car and it was easy to see why such an air of discomfort lay over the Anderstorp paddock It did not seem possible that Brambilla had suddenly found exceptional driving form nor that the March had suddenly become a better car than all the others or even that it had a better Cosworth V8 engine than everybody else It could only be that Brambilla and the March were getting on with the job and somewhere along the line the others had become muddled and confused Pole position had not been gained by genius or technical superiority it was a case of being “less worse” than all the others Nonetheless it was all very gratifying and some people were delighted at the discomforture of the “prima-donnas” Sunday morning saw an untimed half-hour of practice for final adjustments as if the previous two days had not been enough it was useful for Depailler to try out the new engine installed in his car and Ferrari were able to try Lauda’s car which had been equipped with a new gearbox overnight as these days they leave nothing to chance Regazzoni had had his new one the day before They normally reckon to start the races with new gearbox/transmission units and when you realise that Lauda had done 134 laps of practice it can he seen that the Ferrari team were not being over-cautious Through the two days the Formula One cars had covered 2,854 timed laps and this did not include the opening and slowing down laps which do not get timed Add to this the efforts of all the supporting races and you get some idea of how much a racing circuit gets used at a Grand Prix The 80-lap race was due to start at 1.30 p.m. but the crowd was not as large as in previous years for this time the whole event was being televised and the Swedish Government had been encouraging people to stay at home and watch They do not like large gatherings of Swedes at the best of times and get worried when the seemingly placid Swedish populace foregather in large numbers at a motor race The Anderstorp Raceway is unique in having the main grandstands and start-line at one end of the circuit and the pits and the paddock at the other end The first impression is that it would encourage chaos The cars line up in grid formation outside the pits this time all eyes having to be on Brambilla in pole-position and he then led the field of 26 cars round the circuit to the starting-line; there they paused briefly and the flag dropped and the race was on The Italian made no mistakes and was away into the lead the Hesketh driver making a really storming start from the middle of the grid Pryce had got off the mark well only to have a cloud of dust and grit go down the air intake and jam the throttle slides nearly shut While everyone chased off after Brambilla the Welshman trickled slowly round the opening half lap to the pits During the opening lap Brambilla had gained quite a few lengths on Depailler who had the rest quite close to his Tyrrell he entered the circuit in the gap between Brambilla and Depailler so that to anyone not paying careful attention it looked as though the Shadow was in second place Pryce’s problem was whether to stay where he was or move out of the way but he realised that if he let Depailler by he would have to let at least another sixteen cars past As he could comfortably stay with Brambilla and Depailler was not gaining on them he decided to stay where he was Apart from Reutemann taking third place from Jarier the high-speed procession in the wake of Brambilla was content to sit one behind the other which included a miscellaneous collection of Super Stars and newboys were beginning to drop hack to form a second race Nobody could really believe that Brambilla could stay in the lead and then 10 laps and still the orange March was out in front though the pack were closing imperceptibly Lella Lombardi drove into the pits to retire her Cosworth engine sounding flat as something had gone wrong in the metering unit for the fuel injection and on lap 15 Depailler was heading up the pit road with a leak in a rear brake pipe It was not so much that the pack were closing on the leading March for the left front tyre was taking a lot of punishment and getting overheated causing the pressure to rise and lose adhesion As there are five major right-hand bends on the circuit this was serious and first Reutemann got by and then Jarier As this started to happen Tom Pryce moved out of the way and relinquished his position of being second “on the road” After 18 laps Brambilla headed for the pits and the March mechanics had a new front wheel and tyre on in an incredibly short space of time but even so it dropped Brambilla down to fifteenth position The race now took on some semblance of order according to the text book with Reutemann leading Jarier and pulling away In the “also-rans” race Scheckter was leading Peterson and E but as Donohue in the Penske was keeping up with them they could not have been using all their available skill and brilliance Right at the back of the field Torsten Palm had been a bit overwhelmed in his first Grand Prix start and got away in last position but he then settled in and made a good showing He picked-off the tail-enders in a very determined manner In the first race Hunt retired with a brake-fluid leak from a rear caliper Pryce was still in amongst the leading group and Andretti was pressing hard on the heels of Regazzoni Both Brambilla and Depailler were working their way up through the slower cars after their pit-stops and Jody Scheckter had dropped back some places Alan Jones spun his Hesketh and took a long time restarting which put him to the back of the field and Mass retired at the pits with a damaged water pipe under the car as a result of some kerb bashing Just before half-distance Brambilla retired with a broken driveshaft universal joint and Jarier dropped out when his oil pressure gauge zeroed This left Reutemann with a healthy lead and looking extremely confident Pace and Lauda were some way back and the supposed superiority of the Ferrari was not very obvious while Regazzoni was having to work hard to stay ahead of Andretti and Watson The “other race” was almost too depressing to watch with Mark Donohue the star among Fittipaldi Passing through this lot after a slow start was Tony Brise his Graham Hill car having to be set-up for the race by sheer guesswork as a result of all the practice troubles Once Brise had “played himself in” to the feel of the car which he had only driven for a handful of laps in practice he began to work his way up to the fallen-stars and then go by them fairly easily actually elbowing his way by the reigning World Champion as if he was a Formula Atlantic driver Almost as the race was half-way through Carlos Pace got into a big slide as he joined the runway straight and slid over a landing light (did the GPDA inspector miss that?) crumpling the Brabham’s monocoque pretty badly and retiring in a cloud of dust and earth This put Lauda in second place but he was discovering that his much-vaunted Ferrari was in no way superior to the Brabham by driving as hard as he knew how he could keep the gap between the two cars at 10 seconds All this time Tom Pryce had kept his Shadow in this 10 second gap between Reutemann and Lauda and as they lapped the slower cars Pryce went with them so that he moved up to eleventh place from twenty-sixth as the race progressed All this while he had been driving with an inoperative clutch and when he overdid things a bit on lap 54 at the end of the straight going into the chicane and took the escape route he stalled the engine and could not get going again Schuppan had retired the latest Hill car with a broken output shaft in the Hewland transmission and Ian Scheckter had a rear tyre go down suddenly on his Williams as he was rounding the long corner after the pits and this spun him off into the rough It looked as though stalemate had set in and Lauda could see no way in which he was going to win unless something happened to Reutemann or the Brabham By driving as hard as he knew how he could just stay that 10 seconds behind the Brabham and he kept that pressure on for lap after lap and by lap 55 his pit signal at last showed a minute diminution in the gap he realised that something must be happening to Reutemann and the Brabham so he kept on driving on the limit the Brabham’s rear tyres were not gripping so well as earlier as the fact that the track surface was deteriorating with a coating of rubber and continual polishing This was reducing the balance of the Brabham through the right-hand bends whereas the Ferrari was unaffected as it was running on a different type of Goodyear tyre a choice that Lauda had demanded of his team-manager and which was now paying off The chink in the Brabham armour had only started as the merest fraction of a second and soon the fractions became a second and the seconds mounted up and Lauda had the Brabham in sight though the realisation that the Ferrari now had a slight advantage must have weakened his determination He kept the red and white Ferrari at bay as long as he could parrying Lauda’s attempts to sneak through on the inside of corners but finally Lauda gathered up enough added momentum out of the long semi-circle after the pits to pass the Brabham down the straight and then it was all over This took until lap 70 but then the last ten laps were all plain sailing and Lauda brought the Ferrari home first for the third Grand Prix in succession It was not so much that he had won the Swedish Grand Prix as that Reutemann had lost it There was no arguing the fact that Lauda had worked Regazzoni added to the joy-day for Italy by coming home a worthy third having been harassed by Andretti for nearly the whole race In a good fifth position and on the same lap as the leaders was Donohue with the Penske car very satisfied at finishing so well up and wondering how it was that Fittipaldi Peterson and Scheckter were not in their usual position of lapping him Brise had actually been in fifth place after a very determined drive but dropped back when the Hewland gearbox began to break up internally and bits locked the mechanism in fourth gear He struggled along valiantly to the finish John Watson’s early promise had faded when his Surtees ran low on fuel and he had to stop for a refill and later do the same things again The fuel system was playing up and blowing out as much as the engine was using so that consumption was abnormal On the last lap Torsten Palm had his Hesketh run low on fuel and not being used to the vagaries of the Cosworth fuel-injection and Formula One fuel system he let the engine die on him and though it did not lose him a place it put him two laps behind the leader whereas he was only one lap behind in reality Bob Evans kept the BRM going non-stop once more and Wilson Fittipaldi was happy to finish another race with his own car even though he lost a lot of time at the pits having the front wheels changed and looking for the source of a vibration On paper the Swedish Grand Prix looked as though it had all run to form but as you will have realised by now there was much more to it than that The race organisers had laid on a police escort to guide the racing teams transporters from Anderstorp to Gothenburg for these days there is little time to spare In a very short space of time the transporters were loaded and one by one they formed up outside the circuit for the dash for the boat As the Frank Williams transporter left the paddock a bit late in a cloud of dust with its horn blowing someone remarked that “the real race of the day was about to begin” Apart from a few caravans all that was left in the paddock was the victorious Ferrari team for they live on the European mainland and could drive home in their own time and carry the good news back to Modena.—D.S.J Jody Schckter took the Tyrell P34's first win Although the manipulators behind the scenes of Formula One racing have managed to bring about a degree of uniformity to most things they have yet to remove all the variety from the circuits on which the Grand Prix races are held After the seemingly unreal atmosphere of racing round the streets of Monte Carlo the scene moved to the totally flat and featureless geometric Scandinavian Raceway at Anderstorp in the backwoods of Sweden You would be hard put to design a less enthralling circuit than Anderstorp like having to fit as much Scalex track into your front room as possible everything seems spacious and enjoyable and afterwards most people say “That wasn’t a bad little Grand Prix which is also the Flying Club’s runway in contrast to Monte Carlo where the power is “on-off-on” all the time slightly-banked corners go on for as much as 180-degrees at times and can cause some embarrassingly high G-forces to be generated As the circuit is without any visible gradient and seems to be very smooth it would appear that a suspension set-up almost like a Go-Kart Confusion as to the real requirements for Anderstorp continues to reign and there wouldn’t be much fun for the people in Formula One racing if all the requirements were known for all the circuits While some teams confuse themselves by trying to be scientific and logical about their approach or adapt a “hit-and-miss” experimental attitude and when it is all done it is up to the driver anyway had paid a pre-race visit to the track for testing purposes most of them arrived the day before first practice and everyone got stuck-in surprisingly quickly when practice began about 10.30 a.m on Friday morning in bright sunny conditions so the chicane at the end of the runway had been re-aligned to make it a bit tighter and slow the cars even more on to the wriggly section It did not take long to see who was trying hard or who had come to grips with the circumstances a slight surprise being Merzario who was fourth fastest in the initial rush and only got elbowed back to tenth fastest when the stars began to shine There were 27 drivers practising altogether of which only 26 would be allowed to start and the Formula One scene deserves credit for the fact that invariably everyone turns up; non-arrivals for Grand Prix practice are few and far between As has become customary Lauda’s Ferrari was setting the pace but was two or three seconds off last year’s practice pace but equally customary the Tyrrell-twins were right behind the six-wheelers looking beautifully balanced and controllable Scheckter was awakening from his 1975 lethargy and was really trying looking extremely confident and spectacular with it The bearded Harald Ertl suddenly found himself and his Hesketh sitting amongst the scrub alongside the circuit and Tom Pryce found himself stuffed well and truly into the barriers in his Shadow for something had broken in the front-end causing him to crash While Carlos Pace had been trying hard with the Brabham-Alfa Romeo his team-mate Reutemann was held up by gear selection bothers which were eventually traced to distortion of the gearbox end cover over the selector mechanism Mario Andretti secured 2nd on the grid for Lotus There was an enforced break in the practice while the breakdown lorry collected the bent Shadow and Pryce In the McLaren team Hunt was not too happy with the feel of his usual car M23/8 so when practice restarted he went off in the spare car Michael Leclere tried the Hesketh-Williams car but it made little difference to his position near the bottom of the grid and the other two rear runners Kessel and Nellemann in the RAM Racing Brabham-C,osworths both faded away on the circuit with minor troubles Scheckter was really pressing on in the six-wheeled Tyrrell as was Depailler and joining them to show that Lauda and Ferrari can be beaten was Mario Andretti in the Lotus 77 At Zolder there had been signs that Andretti and Colin Chapman were getting to grips with the sorting-out of the new Lotus and before practice at Anderstorp had begun the little USAC driver had expressed satisfaction with the car and confidence that he would be “up there with them” no matter who “them” were While some teams were having minor troubles Leaving the chicane the tiny little left-front/ front wheel parted company from his Tyrrell and the first he knew was a slight twitch of the car as of getting a puncture He looked through the left-hand window of the cockpit surround and saw a stationary brake-disc and no wheel As the car is quite stable (at slower speeds he drove back to the pits and his mechanics gathered round the cockpit to see what he wanted only to find him laughing his head off inside his Bell helmet for none of them had noticed the tiny wheel was missing; then one of them looked down There was no serious damage done and the car was soon raceworthy again The whole hour and a half had seemed to generate an air of frenzy as if it was the last chance to qualify for a good grid position but amidst it all the little Ensign team were getting along nicely and Chris Amon was driving very neatly and smoothly on his first visit to the Swedish track and finished up fifth fastest just behind Lauda who was behind the Tyrrell/Lotus/Tyrrell sandwich the extra paint on his March by reason of the First National Bank sponsorship not affecting his performance In an attempt to approach Anderstorp scientifically the Peterson March was using an enormously long wheelbase brought about by a giant spacer between the engine and gearbox which was actually the gearbox casing from the old central-gearbox 721X but was empty except for the shaft joining the flywheel to the Hewland input shaft Moving the whole rear assembly back had brought an unseen problem with overheating for the sidemounted water radiators rely on air turbulence immediately ahead of the rear wheels to induce crossflow but now the turbulence had moved back with the wheels and no longer reached the radiators which were still in their same positions alongside the engine This problem was solved during the lunch break by reverting to short wheelbase by removing the spacer and bringing the gearbox and rear wheels forward to their normal position The other March-A car had a more fundamental problem for the engine had broken which had stopped Brambilla’s practice but many March mechanics’ hands soon had another engine installed and the car was ready for the afternoon practice The lunch break was also used by the Penske mechanics to weld stiffening plates on the front pick-up points Of the top rear radius arms on the new Penske and while the job was being finished off Watson re-commenced practice with the spare car PC3/02 Regazzoni was another driver who used the team’s spare car in the afternoon practice as his regular car did not feel good under braking A driver who would have liked his team to have had a spare car was Gunnar Nilsson and they would have done so had not their new car destroyed itself in pre-race testing just would not run properly due to the German Rita ignition system playing up and before the afternoon session was over the car was wheeled back into the paddock for serious investigation to take place While Lauda had asserted himself with his normal position at the front his team-mate Regazzoni was still in trouble returning to the pits with oil pouring from a loose union under the engine No damage was done and it was soon put right In the Brabham pits Pace was complaining bitterly to the Alfa Romeo designer Carlo Chiti about the oil all over the back of the car and on the inboard brakes but the cause was not a simple loose union as on the flat-12 cylinder Ferrari; Chiti seemed to suggest that oiliness was a design feature of the flat-12 Alfa Romeo engine When the pandemonium subsided and the electronic timing aparatus fed all its information into the computer system the result of the afternoon efforts was that Lauda was fastest Depailler fifth and Laffite in the Ligier-Matra sixth The only alteration with the combined times for the day was that Depailler moved his six wheeler up into third place On Saturday morning the weather was rather cool and dull and the hour and a half of practice was supposed to be devoted to doing tests with full petrol tanks This is in accordance with a bright idea thought up by the Goodyear tyre technicians and the constructors little mouthpiece In actual fact most people carry on experimenting with handling adjustments to try and improve their times even though there is no official time-keeping taking place or they are trying to beat insuperable problems like making an engine rev properly or a gearbox select its gears properly Actual race preparation does not enter into the thoughts of many teams for there is still the final hour of timed practice to come and the last chance to get a good grid position or even get on the grid at all for the tail-enders The frenzy and pandemonium seemed as pronounced as ever though Laffite was bedding in a new Matra engine and gearbox on the Ligier and Scheckter tried his Tyrrell with the sausage-like air collector box though by and large most people were beginning to abandon air collector boxes preparing to let the engine suck air in as best it could and let the air flow over the car have more effect on the rear aerofoil Reutemann was unhurriedly going along in his Brabham-Alfa Romeo and as the six-wheeler overtook the Brabham it chopped in a bit too soon and the fat rear wheels clipped the front of the Brabham and spun it into a concrete retaining wall so there was a pause while the wreckage was collected and the two drivers gave an explanation of their unruly behaviour to the Stewards Reutemann had banged his right hand rather badly and was not too keen to continue practice even though the Brabham mechanics had the spare car ready for him Merzario would have liked to continue practising but the left rear corner of his March was torn apart as a hub bearing had broken up and was being replaced In the final hour the tempo became even more frenzied and Scheckter and Depailler were forcing ahead with their six-wheelers the handling being such as to give them great confidence to let the whole car slide through the corners in a graceful In complete contrast was the Ensign which Amon was driving with studied neatness and precision Lauda’s Ferrari engine was getting a bit tired a new one being due to be fitted for the race Andretti was really in the Anderstorp groove and heading for the front when all the teeth stripped off third gear pinion in the Hewland gearbox In spite of everything being very hot the Lotus mechanics tore the gearbox apart fitted new gears and Andretti was back in the fray repaying their efforts with second fastest time overall and a place on the front row of the grid for though a complete engine change had got it going properly a joint in the front suspension collapsed and Nilsson lost a lot of time while it was replaced At this point he was still down amongst the rabbits at the back of the field but then just before it was too late everything started to work right and he did a superb fast lap which moved hint right up into sixth place; and then the Lotus ran out of petrol You can’t think of everything when there is a panic on Reutemann resumed practice rather disconsolately in the spare Brabham-Alfa Romeo after having the Ferrari-like nose piece taken off and the original one fitted which meant hack-sawing off the new mounting framework and Pryce was not as confident with the spare Shadow as he had been before his accident Jochen Mass had the lower rear aerofoil on his McLaren off and on and decided to leave it on while Hunt seemed to be spinning every time you looked up the McLaren being quite unable to keep its back wheels under control Alan Jones was trying as hard as he could with the works Surtees and poor Emerson Fittipaldi was back down with the also-rans the Copersucar-sponsored car not responding to chassis-tuning the way they wanted it to Frank Williams was wondering why he had got such a large and opulent set-up to achieve twenty-fifth place overall when Morris Nunn with no set-up or entourage at all had his car in third place overall operating from the back of what looked like a secondhand furniture van compared to the Walter Wolf Racing transporter Frank Williams was not the only one looking sideways at the red Ensign on the second row of the grid with its Valvoline sticker on the side and the name of some completely unknown property development company as well When it was all over it was not surprising that the Danish driver Jac Nellemann and it was interesting that no-one had dominated practice Depailler had been fastest in the first session Lauda in the second and Scheckter in the third but we have had enough races and practice now to see that Ferrari versus the six-wheelers is the format with cheeky intervention by the Ensign and a welcome return of Lotus to the front The earlier demise of Team Lotus to the back of the grid just wasn’t real The Ligier-Matra V12 is always well in the running the McLaren team are still wondering how i-inch oversize on width could possibly have made all that difference and if the Brabham-Alfa Romeos are ever going to get anywhere to justify the size of the operation they had better hurry up because the season is halfway over The back-markers are still the back-markers and there is no real reason why they should change and after the Swedish airforce had tried to emulate the Red Arrows and there had been a few diversions and parades to keep the 33,000 paying customers happy aproached and the serious business of the 72-lap race drew near While the cars were being warmed-up Colin Chapman and his engineers were measuring the overall balance of Nilsson’s car to say nothing of corner-to-diametric-corner and Chapman decided it was “undriveable like that” Then everyone went off on a warm-up lap and lined up in grid formation in front of the pits The starting-line and time-keepers are at the other end so when everyone was ready Scheckter and Andretti on the front row led them away round to the start With the two-by-two grid layout these days and 26 cars taking part those at the back can barely see the starting flag (when there is one) This time the tail-enders were still rounding the corner at the beginning of the starting straight when Scheckter and Andretti reached the starting line The Swedish flag trembled and everyone hung with back wheels spinning furiously on the slippery surface With his Cosworth V8 bouncing on the rev-limiter at 11,500 r.p.m Andretti snatched second gear and the black and gold Lotus leapt into the lead as the others found grip and chased after him to the first corner While the Swedish Ferrari Owners Club looked puzzled at seeing the cars of Lauda and Regazzoni in amongst the pack the Lotus owners in the crowd thought “this is like old times” As the field poured round the 150-degree curve by the pits the order was Andretti but out of the back-markers shot the new Penske with its throttle jammed open by dust and grit on the slides and as Watson scrabbled to switch everything off the car bounded over an earth hank and almost into the crowd Along the runway sped the slim little Lotus with the two six-wheelers in hot pursuit and at the end of the opening lap there was no change among the front runners in the organisation there was some clucking and chuntering and the start-line judges decided that Andretti had jumped the start and they penalised him one minute This information was transmitted to Colin Chapman at the pits who signalled “-58 sec.” to Andretti as he went by steadily pulling out a lead He thought “Is Colin nuts?” for he could see Scheckter two seconds behind in his mirrors as he went along the runway straight Next time the signal read “Start Pen” and the little Italian thought “. .” As there was little point in worrying about it or even wondering if he could make up a minute on Scheekter or anyone else who got into second place he decided to “ win the race and sort it out afterwards” Naturally none of his opponents knew about the penalty and few people in the pits heard the loudspeaker announcement with the continual roar of the passing cars One thing they all did know was that Gunnar Nilsson was not racing any more for on the third lap he spun out of the right-angle corner before the pits and cannoned backwards into the pit wall so there was no need for expianations to his team was not doing anything stupid but he wasn’t exciting the crowd McLaren’s James Hunt managed a 5th place finish Reutemann gave up as his right hand was hurting him and he felt there was no point in being brave and heroic in last place and Kessel spun off with the rough on lap 6 Fittipaldi had achieved some sort of handling for his car by removing the front anti-roll bar altogether but the result was that the front tyres wore out so rapidly that there was no point in going on Ferrari enthusiasts had maintained that if the fresh engine in Lauda’s car was going to make any difference he would be in the lead in five laps and it was obvious that he never would be while those in front kept going nor was he stopping to argue about his penalty Scheckter was sliding the Tyrrell through the corners beautifully but not quite keeping the gap constant and Amon fourth and then came Lauda driving as hard as he could Quite a gap had opened up before Laffite went by leading a nose-to-tail string of eleven cars and Ertl had made a pit stop after going offthe road Gradually the scene at the front spread out with equal gaps between the first five cars while Laffite pulled the Ligier-Matta well ahead of Hunt The Hesketh of Ertl got in the way of the following bunch when they came to lap him as it was faster than most down the straight By twenty laps the high-speed procession was very settled and it was just a matter of seeing who was going to break down first The number had already been reduced by one when the Dutch-owned Ensign burst its engine at the chicane Andretti was looking so smooth and comfortable out in front that it seemed that nothing could stop him or the Ferraris and everyone felt that Amon and the Ensign should not have been there in fourth place while a lot of people wished it wasn’t was enjoying himself and could see no reason why he should not have third place as he was gradually catching Depailler A cloud of dust went up as Branshills got in a muddle while braking for the pits corner and took to the rough stuff but it did not delay him and he kept his place behind Regazzoni The March nose cowling was decidedly tatty on the right side after this and on right-hand bends the air was getting under the nose and upsetting the balance Merzario could not understand why those in front of him were going so slowly Jarier and Mass and then set off after Brambilla Just over half distance as a lethargic air was pervading the scene a very large cloud of dust at the first corner after the start indicated that something pretty serious had happened Anion had Depailler in his sights when the left front corner of the Ensign collapsed And the car went head-on into the barriers after knocking down two catch-fences A very shaken New Zealander climbed out of the wreckage with bruised legs and was very lucky to be uninjured While the Ensign crash at Zolder had happened too quickly for Amon to know what had happened this one had gone on for a long time in his full view While this had been taking place there was a stir going on in the pits for Ken Tyrrell had been trying to find out whether the minute penalty on Andretti was official and Race Control at the pits end of the circuit could not get any sense out of the control point at the start-line Until he knew officially he was not going to signal Scheckter or Depailler so that as far as they were concerned they were still trying to catch the Lotus What they didn’t know was that the Lotus Cosworth VS engine had lost its edge and Andretti was trying to give it an easy time and had been doing so for ten or fifteen laps which was why his lead had not been increasing As the Lotus finished lap 45 it was slowing visibly and as it approached the pits end of the circuit on lap 46 a gusher of oil blew out of one of the inlet trumpets as a piston broke up and the whole thing went by the pits in a cloud of smoke and that was that waiting for confirmation of the minute penalty Tyrrell said “Don’t bother” and returned to his pit to urge his lads to take it easy and concentrate on completing the remaining laps In first and second places the revolutionary six-wheeled Tyrrells cruised round in complete control in only their fourth Grand Prix Michaels or Leonards” must have felt a bit uncomfortable Given that they only inherited those places because the Lotus engine blew up it did not alter the fact of being first and second and behind them were thirteen other cars that would have liked some of that “luck” and Laffite was very content in fourth place and in seventh place Pace had Regazzoni closing up on him the Ferrari driver obviously becoming conscious of the fact that one of the “hopeless Alfa Romeo-engined” cars was ahead of his all-conquering Ferrari In ninth place was the struggling Brambilla in the orange March and behind him With everything to lose and so much to gain Scheckter drove on tip-toe trying as hard as he could not to strain the engine for it only wanted one little thing to go wrong to spoil it all and Merzario’s engine giving out right at the end the Swedish Grand Prix ran its course and the two six-wheeled Tyrrells finished in perfect order in first and second places The Ferrari team were not at all happy with their third place nor with Regazzoni while a lot of people would have been very happy to have finished third It was interesting that Regazzoni’s Ferrari went by Peterson’s March on the long straight as if it was standing still but could make no ground at all on Hunt’s McLaren on the same straight Scheckter celebrates a famous first win for his Tyrrell six-wheeler The Swedish weekend was wound up with a lot of questions being asked and few answers given but with everyone looking forward to the next Grand Prix which is on the Paul Ricard circuit Principally it has the same ability of not producing much in the way of emotional driving or racing There were a lot of familiar faces missing from Sweden Mauro Forghieri; the Lotus Team Manager Peter Warr; some of the “Union officials” from the “Trade and Industry” and the FIA; quite a lot of the “eyes and ears of the world” and Whether the rising or falling fortunes of the various factions had anything to do with absentees is only a matter of conjecture.—D.S.J Charles Duku has joined Swedish lower-tier side The 25-year-old striker completed the switch after successful negotiations with his new employers having an option to extend the duration of his stay after the initial contract period The former Karela United player garnered interests from several clubs in Europe before settling with his new club The talented forward said he was happy to join his new club and looked forward to scoring more goals for them Duku previously played for Bulgarian third tier side Slivnishki Geroi and AC Palazzolo in the Italian Seria D where he scored six goals in 15 appearances in 2016 He also played for TSV Germania Windeck in 2017 where he sired nine goals and made four assists in 19 games Duku moved to the Ghana Premier League side Karela United FC He got a national team call-up in 2016 with the Ghana Olympic team