A look back at Austria: 1975

In the build-up to this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix we are looking back at some classic races from the event’s history. This time looking at the 1975 Grand Prix, in which the Monza Gorilla, Vittorio Brambilla took his only F1 win.

1975 Austrian Grand Prix

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The 1975 Austrian Grand Prix weekend started on a sombre note, with the 1Indyindy 500 winner Mark Donohue having a fatal crash, which claimed his life as well as two marshals at the event, with his death proving to be one of the last in Formula 1’s dark age of fatalities.

Qualifying however gave the crowd something to cheer about with home hero Niki Lauda claiming his seventh pole position of the season on his way to his first World Championship, ahead of James Hunt and Emerson Fittipaldi, with eventual winner, Brambilla starting down in eighth.

Race day started with ominous thunder looking clouds surrounding the circuit, with the rain causing a delay to the start of 45 minutes. When the race did eventually start on a wet track, the first two got away from the front row of the grid well, with the Tyrell of Patrick Depailler storming to third position by the end of the first lap. It soon became clear though that Hunt had the pace over Lauda, with the Austrian’s Ferrari seemingly not having the optimal setup for the wet conditions, and on lap 15 Hunt took the lead of the Grand Prix.

However this lead was to be short lived, as Hunt’s ford engine faltered for him and was only running on seven cylinders, leading to Brambilla, who had shown surprisingly stunning pace in the wet conditions, taking the lead from the ailing Hesketh.

Further back from the fight for the lead, Ronnie Peterson and Jochen Mass had moved up the field to take positions in the points but both had their separate problems, with Peterson pitting for a replacement visor, and Mass spinning from what was third place at the time, in worsening conditions. This spin is what triggered frantic negotiations between the Grand Prix Drivers associations and the race officials about whether to stop the race.

On lap 29 it was decided to stop the race with Brambilla taking his only F1 win, with Hunt and Tom Pryce completing the podium with everyone being rewarded half points as they had only completed 60% of the race.

There was some confusion in the pitlane as some teams were preparing for a restart. This would have been especially cruel on Brambilla as he crashed immediately after the race had stopped, but as the chequered flag had been shown and not a red, meaning he kept an historic win for the March team.

Sam Gale