Dear David,
It has never been proved that BRM was using a 3.3-litre engine at Spa in 1970, but, as Robin Herd said in Simon Taylor’s interview with him in the March issue of Motor Sport, “It’s generally accepted now that Pedro had a 3.3-litre engine that day. We knew it right after the race…”

All I can tell you is what Chris Amon told me a couple of years after the race. Amon had qualified his March 701 on the front row, alongside the sister (Tyrrell-entered) car of Jackie Stewart, and the Lotus 49 of Jochen Rindt. Rodríguez, meantime, started from the third row.

Amon passed Stewart for the lead on lap three, and Rodríguez passed him a lap later, to move up to second. On lap five Pedro took the lead, and for the rest of the race he and Chris ran together, finishing a second apart. On the last lap Amon steeled himself to take the Masta Kink without lifting, and set a new lap record, six-tenths faster than Stewart’s pole time, but even so he could do nothing about the BRM.

Amon was invariably brilliant at Spa, but so was Rodríguez, and if Chris was disappointed – yet again – to be denied a Grand Prix victory, he was… surprised, let’s say, by the BRM’s speed on race day. “You’d expect a ‘twelve’ to have an advantage over an ‘eight’ at a place as quick as Spa, but Pedro hadn’t been that quick in practice, and when I saw off Jackie I thought I’d cracked it. Then I saw this white thing in my mirrors, and thought, ‘Where the hell did he come from?’

“That was one thing. What really amazed me, though, was the way Pedro overtook me. I got out of Eau Rouge better than he did, but up the hill to Les Combes he just drove past – didn’t even bother to slipstream me! That thing was unbelievable in a straight line – I was pretty disappointed to be beaten that day, because I honestly don’t think I could have driven any harder, but later on someone who’d then been part of the BRM team told me I shouldn’t feel too bad about it…”

It’s a lovely thought – now to award the victory to Amon, one of the greatest drivers, crowned or uncrowned, as you say. But I guess it will for ever remain in his ‘if only’ box…