TODAY IN RACING: 6 September — Ferraris thrill Monza
There were four Grands Prix over the years on 6 September, all of them at Monza, where Ferrari delivered two of those wins to thrill the tifosi.
John Surtees took the 1964 win aboard his 158 to set up his unique record of becoming the only man ever to have won world titles on two and four wheels. Clay Regazzoni took a more sombre win in his 312B in 1970, the day after Jochen Rindt’s tragic accident.
Nelson Piquet won the 1987 race driving a Williams FW11B en route to his third world championship in Williams’ sixth win on the trot, while Lewis Hamilton dominated for Mercedes in 2015. Seems not much is different so far this year!
In other racing, Al Holbert was a busy man in US sportscar racing, winning the ’81 Trois-Rivieres Can Am in his CAC 2-Chevrolet and sharing a Porsche 962 to ’87 San Antonio honours with Derek Bell and Chip Robinson. Emmanuel Collard and Vincenzo Sospiri meanwhile shared a Ferrari 333SP to 1986 Nurburgring endurance honours.
junior johnson won at hickory by four laps
Back to the ‘States in ’59 Augie Pabst’s Scarab Chevy won at Meadowdale, Illinois, while Jimmy McElreath steered his Coyote-Ford to win the first race at the Ontario Speedway in California. In stock cars, Junior Johnson won the Hickory, North Carolina NASCAR race by four laps and Jeff Gordon made it six wins in even races at Darlington ’98.
Off the beaten track, Mikko Hirvonen benefited Sebastien Loeb penalty to steal World Rally Australia 2009 in his Ford Focus RS and Timmy Hansen won the 2015 French World Rallycross driving a Peugeot 208 at Loheac.
In other news, in 1900, Andrew L. Riker set a new 47 km/h electric car speed record over for the five-mile course in Newport, Rhode Island in an effort to prove that the electric car could compete with its noisier petroleum-fuelled cousins. Seems they are still at it 120 years later!
