Ronchi drives Brabham to repeat win at Italy

Ermanno Ronchi won a nail-biting second round of the Motor Sport supported FIA Thoroughbred Grand Prix Championship at Monza, in the Brabham BT49 owned by Bernie Ecclcstone. It was the chassis’s third triumph on Italian soil, for in Nelson Piquet’s hands it won the 1980 Italian and ’81 San Marino GPs at Imola.

Ronchi qualified second, behind Ian Giles’s ex-Riccardo Patresc BT49D, and battled it out in a train with Giles and the Lotus 87 of Joaquin Folch and Paul Ricard winner Steve Hitchins’ Lotus 91. After wishbone failure and a broken fourth gear put Giles and Folch out, an inspired Ronchi passed Hitchins at Roggia on the last lap.

Third, as in France, was Paul Ingram’s Samson Shadow DN9-2B, which pipped Helen Bashford’s DN9-4B. A superb effort by Chris Perkins in his lively Surtees TS19 netted a maiden Class B victory and seventh place, behind Michael Schryver’s Lotus 72-3. MP