Nelson Piquet once memorably described driving a Grand Prix car around Monaco as akin to trying to ride a bicycle around your bedroom and certainly, while it is not too difficult to drive a racing car around the circuit, it becomes a totally different animal when it comes to wringing out those last tenths of a second. Getting the line right, which may be totally different from attempting the same thing on a conventional circuit, avoiding the bumps and manhole covers and generally trying to string together a good lap cannot be easy and, more likely, must be highly daunting.
Julian Bronson must be braver than most, as well as considerably more skilled. He has won at the Monaco Historique before, and set off to do the same this year from the lofty heights of Mac Hulbert’s ERA cockpit. Watching him shave more and more off his lap times was a joy. The bare statistics show that he won again, but it was a great drive, pressed all the way by the sister car of Paddins Dowling. In some ways the latter’s was an almost better drive as his car was giving away 500-cc to the winner. German contemporary DTM refugee Frank Stippler provided a spectacle of car control, bringing his Maserati 8CM of 1934 vintage home after lurid power slides through Casino Square.
Roger Wills won the Pre-’61 GP cars event in his Cooper, and the rest of the field seemed strangely subdued. Gary Pearson worked hard at second place with the first front-engined car home, the BRM P25. Ironically, Barrie Baxter’s latest acquisition, the first rear-engined BRM P48, was 3rd. By far the most spectacular was William Nuthall, who threw his Cooper-Bristol around, lifting wheels and getting completely out of shape—sideways virtually everywhere. It was clear the circuit held few fears to him. One of the many drivers of yesteryear taking part over the weekend was former F1 and F2 racer Beppe Gabbiani, at the wheel of the Lancia Marino F1. This was powered by an Aurelia V6, and had taken part in one Grand Prix, the Naples event of 1957. Beppe handled it with verve.
Alex Buncombe, in the Jaguar Heritage C-Type, ran away with the sports car race held to commemorate the fact that in 1952 the Monaco Grand Prix was run for these cars, while Classic Team Lotus and Andy Middlehurst enjoyed a great win in the ’61-to-’65 GP cars event. Lawrence Auriana had brought over arguably the most exciting car of the weekend from the U.S. This was one of the two Ferrari 1512 1.5 liter flat-12 Grand Prix cars of 1964, for Joe Colasacco to drive. Very sadly, despite it looking and sounding glorious, it could not be made to run effectively for more than one or two laps at a time.
The Pre-’72 Grand Prix cars provided not only a win for Duncan Dayton but also, perhaps, the drive of the weekend. From a not auspicious grid position and after two cars were eliminated on the start-line, he proceeded to reel in the leaders. At one point all seemed lost, as he disappeared down the Mirabeau escape road and Andrew Smith seemed to have the race sewn up in his March 701, but totally determined driving by Dayton in his Brabham BT33, combined with a deflating tire on the March, brought it all together for a dream victory for the American. One feature here was the fact that Manfredo Rossi drove his Tecno PA123 to a higher grid position than it had ever experienced before.
Two-liter Formula 3 cars always put on a good show, and with some rain near Casino this was no exception. The cars are fast and evenly matched, and the majority of the field finished on the same lap, with the winner being Ben Barber in his Lola T670.
The final race for Pre-’78 F1 cars was spoiled by a rainstorm that had been threatening all day. After two false starts, Michael Lyons ran away in his Hesketh to a 50-second win over the McLaren M26 of Bobby Verdon Roe.
By Peter Collins
