Notes on the Cars in Sweden

Browse pages
Current page

1

Current page

2

Current page

3

Current page

4

Current page

5

Current page

6

Current page

7

Current page

8

Current page

9

Current page

10

Current page

11

Current page

12

Current page

13

Current page

14

Current page

15

Current page

16

Current page

17

Current page

18

Current page

19

Current page

20

Current page

21

Current page

22

Current page

23

Current page

24

Current page

25

Current page

26

Current page

27

Current page

28

Current page

29

Current page

30

Current page

31

Current page

32

Current page

33

Current page

34

Current page

35

Current page

36

Current page

37

Current page

38

Current page

39

Current page

40

Current page

41

Current page

42

Current page

43

Current page

44

Current page

45

Current page

46

Current page

47

Current page

48

Current page

49

Current page

50

Current page

51

Current page

52

Current page

53

Current page

54

Current page

55

Current page

56

Current page

57

Current page

58

Current page

59

Current page

60

Current page

61

Current page

62

Current page

63

Current page

64

Current page

65

Current page

66

Current page

67

Current page

68

Current page

69

Current page

70

Current page

71

Current page

72

Current page

73

Current page

74

Current page

75

Current page

76

Current page

77

Current page

78

Current page

79

Current page

80

Current page

81

Current page

82

Current page

83

Current page

84

Current page

85

Current page

86

Current page

87

Current page

88

Current page

89

Current page

90

Current page

91

Current page

92

Current page

93

Current page

94

Current page

95

Current page

96

Current page

97

Current page

98

Current page

99

Current page

100

Current page

101

Current page

102

Current page

103

Current page

104

Current page

105

Current page

106

Current page

107

Current page

108

Current page

109

Current page

110

Current page

111

Current page

112

Current page

113

Current page

114

Current page

115

Current page

116

Current page

117

Current page

118

Current page

119

Current page

120

Current page

121

Current page

122

Current page

123

Current page

124

Current page

125

Current page

126

Current page

127

Current page

128

Current page

129

Current page

130

Current page

131

Current page

132

Current page

133

Current page

134

Current page

135

Current page

136

Current page

137

Current page

138

Current page

139

Current page

140

The March teams were the only ones who had to do any major rebuilding after the ravages of Monte Carlo, both 761/1, Brambilla’s car, and 761/4, Merzario’s car needing new “monocoque tubs” as well as numerous suspension parts. In fart, recently, the March rebuilding programme has been such that an order is placed with their “monocoque” fabrication shop first thing on Monday morning and in preparation for the Swedish Grand Prix an order was put in for “a white one and an orange one”. So far only Stuck’s car, 761/2, has not needed a major rebuild. Peterson’s car had a visit to the paint shop as the Penske sponsors, the American First National City Bank Travellers Cheques, agreed to put some money in the March kitty in exchange for Peterson’s car being painted in their colours and carrying their name. A strange quirk of the world of Formula One, for last year Roger Penske bought a March 751 when his own car seemed uncompetitive, and the paint-shop wizards coloured it red, white and blue to make it look more like a Penske than a March. This year the reverse happened, with March painting their car to make it look more like a Penske car. Confusing, isn’t it!

In addition to the two rebuilt cars, there were two brand new cars, the Penske PC4 making its public debut and a third Surtees TS19 being completed for Brett Lunger, to replace the car sold to Pescarolo and his Norev-toys sponsor. TS19/03 was virtually identical to Lunger’s original car TS19/01, the only difference being larger and more powerful brakes, like those on Alan Jones’ car, TS19/02. The Penske PC4/01 was a logical development of the PC3 series, not differing in any radical way, but full of detail changes and generally being a better car. In place of the full-width nose and the chisel nose with fins, tried at various times on the PC3 cars, the new one carried a Ferrari-like nose with a full-width aerofoil mounted ahead of the nose-cone. Another car to adopt the Ferrari-like front aerofoil was BT45/1, the spare Btabham-Alfa Romeo, the other two Ecclestone cars being to their usual pattern.

Ferrari themselves were not noticeably changed from their Monte Carlo guise, Lauda retaining 026, Regazzoni 027 with 025 as the spare. For experimentation purposes there were some rear aerofoils with bulbous aerodynamic end plates, instead of the normal flat aluminium ones. Tyrrell was very confident of his Project 34 six-wheelers and Scheckter and Depailler had their normal cars, but tucked away round the back were their two old 007 series cars just in case of emergency. Team Lotus had had a bit of a set-back during pre-race testing at Anderstorp with a new car, 77/R3, when something broke and deflected it into the barriers, virtually destroying it, so that R1 and R2 were being used for Andretti and Nilsson as usual. Team McLaren had their usual three cars, M23/8 for Hunt, M23/9 for Mass, and M23/6 as a spare and similarly the Shadow Team had their usual three cars, DN5/5B for Pryce, DN5/4A for Janet and DNS/3A as the team spare. With Ickx driving at Le Mans, Frank Williams had more cars than drivers, so while Leclere was driving the second Postlethwaite-Hesketh 308C, which is known as Williams FW05/2, the original car which Williams bought off the Hesketh team was available as a spare for the French driver. Emerson Fittipaldi was still driving the first of the 1976 cars, FD04/1, while Hoffmann’s car FD04/2 was there as a stand-by, the team still not feeling strong enough to enter two cars. The Ensign, the Ligier, the Boro-Ensign and Ertl’s Hesketh were unchanged, while the RAM Racing Brabhams were all present, Loris Kessel using BT44B/1 with BT44B/2 as a spare, and the Danish driver Jac Nellemann was in BT42/2.

During practice there were some changes made, either by choice or by force majeure. Hunt decided he preferred the McLaren M23/6 instead of M23/8, Reutemann crashed the Brabham BT45/2-2 so was forced to use BT45/1, Pryce crashed Shadow DN5/5B so had to use D5/3A, and Nellemann broke the RAM Brabham BT42/2 so took BT44B/2. Regazzoni used the spare Ferrari while his regular one was being repaired and Watson used the Penske PC3/02 while the new car was repaired and Leclerc tried the older of the Williams cars, but stuck to his normal one for the race. Neither of the 007 Tyrrells were used, nor was the spare Fittipaldi, while a collection of spares in the March teams was never assembled into a complete car.

After the race there were four more wrecks to return to England for repair, to add to the two in practice, making a total of six major wrecks. These were Brabham BT45/2-2 and Shadow DN5/5B, crashed in practice, and the new Penske PC4/01, the Ensign MN05, the Lotus 77/R2 and the Brabham BT44B/1 crashed during the race.—D.S.J.