1968 Dutch Grand Prix race report: Stewart’s Scottish-French Connection

When the Grand Prix teams arrived in Zandvoort for the beginning of practice the Brabham team were in a shambles, with their 4-cam Repco engines in bits as the pistons had been touching the valves at peak revs, during test sessions at Silverstone, the McLaren team were confident as they had already been practising on the Zandvoort circuit, and had got down to around 1min 24sec and the Honda team were gloomy, having been in Zandvoort all week with incessant rain.

The Eagle team were present in personnel only, Ferrari were strong, BRM a little uncertain, Lotus still at half-strength with only one top driver, Cooper despondent with only one car, and Matra were out to make amends for the Spa debacle.

McLaren and Hulme had the two team cars from McLaren Racing that they had used at Spa, both with the heavier and stronger drive shafts, Lotus had their two 49B cars, for Hill and Oliver, still carrying the taped-on strips of aluminium across the top of the wedge tails, Brabham and Rindt had the two BT26 cars as at Spa, with nose fins and tail-mounted “wing”, and they had the BT24 car driven at the Spanish GP by Rindt as a spare.

The Gurney-Eagle engine was too far behind in its development programme to justify racing, so the Californian driver was awaiting the use of the spare Brabham, depending on how the new ones performed. Since the parting of the ways between Gurney and Weslake Engineering the V12 engine development, as done by AAR, has not got properly under way.

Surtees was still alone with his mechanics and their unsuccessful V12 Honda, and Cooper were reduced to their original Type 86B with Bianchi as driver, after their misfortunes of the Spa weekend.

BRM were still running the 12-cylinder cars, with Hewland gearboxes, there being no sign of their own new gearbox, or of the new 16-cylinder cars. They had P133-01 for Rodriguez and numbers two and three of the P126 series for Attwood to choose from.

Stewart had the choice of Tyrrell’s two Matra-Cosworth V8 cars, and Beltoise had the original Matra V12 as the second car was being prepared with new and lighter components for their all-important French Grand Prix.

The Ferrari team had re-positioned the aerofoil “wing” on their cars, moving it forward to a position just above the front of the engine, and Amon had the choice of 0007 or 0011, while Ickx had 0009, all three running on 13-in, front wheels.

Courage had Tim Parnell’s 12-cylinder BRM, Siffert the Team Walker Lotus 49, with new engine after the disaster at Spa, Bonnier his yellow and red McLaren-BRM V12 and Moser the 1966 Brabham-Repco V8 belonging to Swiss enthusiast Charles Vogele.

Qualifying

Although overcast and windy, Friday remained dry and the whole day was devoted to practice, with breaks for lunch and tea, so that with lap times of well under a minute and a half there was more than enough time available for most people.

At the previous Grand Prix, in Belgium, everyone had seemed reluctant to start pushing hard on the first day and when it rained on the second day the result was a rather false starting grid.

At Zandvoort the opposite was the case and McLaren and Hulme were out very smartly to set the pace and stir everyone up. Last year, in a last-minute flurry, Hill had recorded 1min 24.6sec in the brand-new Lotus 49, Gurney had got his Eagle V12 round in 1min 25.1sec and Brabham did 1min 25.6sec with the old vertical-valve Repco engine.

Everyone had broken 1min 30sec during practice and the race lap record was a not-very-impressive 1min 28.08sec by Clark in the second of the Lotus 49 cars. Later last year lckx had set a new lap record in 1min 27.9sec in an F2 Matra, which indicated that one year later, with chassis development, tyre development, brake development and engine development, to say nothing of more experienced drivers, times in the very low one-minute-twenties were anticipated.

If not, then the Grand Prix “circus” had been wasting its time over the past 12 months, for, apart front a few guard-rail “triffids” growing up, the track was unchanged. In a very short space of time Hulme was lapping in under 1min 25sec and McLaren was not far off, and this got the rest going, so that by lunch-time Hill, Amon and Ickx were hard after Hulme, with times in the 1min 25sec bracket, and Rodriguez, Courage and Siffert were right behind them, while Moser, Bonnier, Attwood and Bianchi had yet to get below 1min 30sec.

Neither of the 4-cam Repco engines had been got running by lunch-time, the laborious job of increasing the clearance of the tops of the pistons having to be done by hand scraping, and because of this Gurney was unable to use the spare Brabham-Repco. The engine in Hill’s Lotus 49 was sounding awful at peak rpm and it was thought that the rev-limiting electrical device was wrongly set, but it later turned out to be caused by faulty ignition timing.

The Ferraris were in excellent tune and sounded superb and once again Courage was going faster than the two factory BRM drivers. The V12 Matra engine was using a different and shorter exhaust system and had lost some of its sharpness from the exhaust note, and Stewart was finding all the cornering a strain on his damaged wrist.

After lunch the first of the Brabhams appeared, being BT26-2 for Rindt, and Brabham had a go in it as well, while Amon changed from Ferrari 0011 to Ferrari 0007, recording identical times with the two cars. Oddly enough the two McLaren drivers had made little progress during the day, but their initial outing had given everyone a sense of urgency and the afternoon saw some really fierce motoring take place with a whole lot of laps in the 1min 23sec bracket, relegating the McLarens to mid-field.

Courage had to stop embarrassing the works BRMs when an ignition pick-up on the flywheel broke, but up to then he had been really enjoying himself. Oliver was working very hard in the second Lotus 49, endeavouring to keep up with the top boys and justify his place in the Lotus team, and while he was not too smooth he was fast.

Practice ended at 5:30pm, but long before that the BRM team had gone home in despair, feeling that their drivers were not getting anywhere and were simply wearing the cars out. Beltoise had made steady progress all day, starting at 1min 29.75sec and working his waydown progressively to 1min 26.76sec, and everyone was below 1min 30sec, except for Gurney, who did not practise.

Rindt and Brabham shook everyone by joining in the race for pole position from the moment they appeared on the track, and in no time at all Rindt was in the one-twenty-fives and got faster and faster to record second best of the whole day with 1min 23.75sec, a mere quarter of a second behind Amon. Brabham appeared when most people had had enough and in a very few laps had clocked 1min 23.90sec, which made everyone realise that the 4-cam Repco V8 engine will be a force to be reckoned with when it gets over its teething troubles.

There was a general feeling of relief when practice ended for the overall pace had been much faster than anyone anticipated, with the first eight cars below last year’s fastest practice lap, the first 14 below the 1967 lap record, and the remaining four well under 1min 30sec.

It seemed that the whole field had started in 1968 at the point where they had left off in 1967 and shown some real progress. If we get a good 4-wheel-drive car and a good 4-wheel-drive driver on the scene in 1969 we should get another big stride forward to times below 1 min. 20 sec. for the Dutch circuit.

On Saturday there were only two hours of practice, from 3:30pm to 5:30pm, and it was felt that it would be enough for yet further improvements to be made, but the weather thought otherwise and rain and wind blew in from the North Sea and cast a gloom over the town and the circuit.

Although most drivers were out on the damp track no serious fast laps could be achieved, but even so there were various troubles, for Brabham’s Repco V8 engine had a bearing in the drive to the alternator seize up, Hill had some new drive shafts fitted to his Lotus, but the universal-joints did not have enough angular movement on full suspension bump so they were replaced by the old-type shafts, Siffert had a radius arm mounting pull away from the chassis on the left side, and Hulme’s new engine would not run cleanly.

Gurney at last managed to get his hands on the spare Brabham, and after much difficulty was able to more or less fit in the cockpit. Stewart’s wrist had swollen up so he gave practice a miss, and Beltoise had a quiet go round in the first of the Cosworth-powered Matras, as well as his own V12 car.

After a short dry period, when Gurney quickly got into the 1min 25sec bracket, the rain swept down again and nobody showed much interest in going out, but as it eased off those two professional-professional-drivers, Brabham and Surtees, went out to be prepared for rain on race day.

The rain then stopped and the strong wind dried the track surprisingly quickly so that the last part of the afternoon saw a lot of activity and some very fast laps, but not quite as quick as the previous day on average, though some drivers made fractional improvements.

It seemed very likely that had it been a dry, cool day Rindt would have got his 4-cam Brabham-Repco V8 round in close to 1min 22sec, while Amon (Ferrari) and Hill (Lotus 49B) would have been right with him, but the weather put a stop to any serious progress.

Race

The race was due to start at 2:30pm on Sunday and by that time rain was in the offing so there had been a lot of last-minute tyre changing and a lot of uncertain decisions were made. The KNAC had obtained special permission from the FIA to permit six mechanics to work on a car at the pits if a change of tyres was deemed necessary during the race, instead of the normal maximum of two mechanics for any other sort of pit stop.

Unlike the Belgian GP where the start is preceded by a certain amount of “showmanship” for the benefit of the paying customers, the Dutch GP is preceded by nothing in the way of presentation, the drivers and cars drifting out of the paddock in disorderly fashion and going off on a warm-up lap in their own time.

As the 19 cars lined up on the “dummy-grid” there were still doubts in some team managers’ minds as to which type of tyre to use, and the rain was already falling.

As they moved up to the start-line the front row looked “all wings and fins”, with Amon (Ferrari) on the right, his car with nose spoilers and rear “wing”, in the centre was Rindt with large yellow nose fins on his Brabham and a yellow rear-mounted “wing” carrying a Goodyear advertisement, and Hill (Lotus 49B) with golden fins on each side of the nose of his car, and the “wedge-shaped” tail with additional aluminium “spoiler” along the trailing edge.

Whether all these “bits and bobs” were doing any good it would be hard to say, but they looked interesting and colourful and made the drivers happy, so that they drove that much harder round the corners!

In the pouring rain it was a question of throttle pedal control that got the cars away from the line and on “tip-toe” Rindt led the field into the first corner and along the twisty bit behind the paddock.

“In the pouring rain it was a question of throttle pedal control”

As they splashed their way over the hill and away round the sand-dunes, first Hill went by Rindt and then Stewart, as the Austrian driver discovered that BF and BI get you nowhere on a wet track and a delicate touch on the controls was going to be the order of the day.

They all streamed by on the opening lap, with spray flying high off the fat tyres, with Hill leading Stewart and Rindt holding up Amon, Ickx, Rodriguez, Siffert and Beltoise, while McLaren and Brabham were higher up the field than they deemed safe and soon dropped back.

On the second lap Hill and Stewart had left the rest behind, as Rindt was still blocking the progress of the others, but on lap 3, Amon, Ickx, Beltoise, Rodriguez and Siffert all got by the Austrian in that order.

As they ended the fourth lap Stewart drew level with Hill and swept by into the lead as they braked for the hairpin at the end of the straight. At the same time Beltoise took the V12 Matra past the two Ferraris and into third place, so that Matra were not only leading as they have done in every championship Grand Prix this season, but had a strong third place as well.

“Stewart proceeded to give a wonderful display of wet-weather driving”

Stewart proceeded to give a wonderful display of wet-weather driving, all the more creditable as he had not practised in the wet, and Beltoise backed him up by leaving the Ferraris and closing on Hill. It was very clear that Hill did not feel confident in the Lotus 49B on the slippery track, and the Ferraris were suffering from a lack of rpm range, the sudden arrival of power making them spin their wheels instantly.

However, Amon (in 0011) was controlling his accelerator pedal much better than Ickx (in 0009) and delicate throttle control was all-important under the terribly slippery conditions. As the two Matras were on new Dunlop rain tyres, and the Lotus and the Ferraris were on Firestone tyres it looked as if tyres were deciding the race, but equally it could have been that the Matra chassis was that much better than the Lotus or the Ferrari.

Rodriguez and Gurney, both on Goodyear tyres, were moving up rapidly after a poor start, whereas the two McLarens, also on Goodyears, were falling back equally rapidly, and Attwood, on Dunlops, was getting nowhere.

On the fifth lap Courage spun coming out of the Hunzerug hairpin and damaged the nose cowling on his BRM, so he stopped next time round and BRM’s spare one was fitted, this stop dropping him to last place, a lap behind the leaders.

Lap times were down to 1min 46sec in the pouring rain and how they all stopped at the end of the fast straight past the pits was amazing, for, apart from the brakes being full of water, there seemed to be no adhesion at all.

Siffert was gradually dropping back and Hulme was down at the end of the field with a misfiring engine, and he gave up the unequal struggle after nine laps and stopped at the pits.

By ten laps the race had settled into a pattern, with Stewart, in the newer and lighter of his two Matras, drawing steadily away from everyone; Hill in Lotus 49B/5 was just holding second place, but Beltoise in the original V12 Matra was about to catch him; then, after a gap, Amon and Ickx were being pressed by Rodriguez (BRM P133) and Gurney (Brabham BT24) was closing on them; Rindt (Brabham BT26) was getting the hang of wet weather driving and keeping in front of McLaren, Surtees and Brabham; then came Siffert, Attwood, Oliver and Moser, with Bonnier and Bianchi bringing up the rear, apart from Courage, who was last due to his pit stop.

As Beltoise went by into second place on lap 11, Hill made no attempt to keep up with the Matra V12 and the French blue cars were now firmly first and second. Surtees finished this lap by stopping at the pits to fit some different Firestone tyres and Bianchi failed to finish the lap, as on the last corner before the straight he was blinded by the spray from Bonnier’s McLaren and struck a kerb and ran into a marshal’s post, fortunately without any personal damage.

There was spray and water everywhere and it was amazing how the exposed ignition systems continued to work, or anything else for that matter. The two works Brabhams were running their 4-cam Repco engines without the drive to the alternators, as they had found the bearing on Rindt’s engine seized after practice.

After 14 laps Rindt stopped at the pits with a misfire, thought to be due to water on the ignition, but after two more laps he stopped again and had the battery changed as it was running down, with no alternator working.

Surtees found his change of tyres very little better, and spun, without damage, out of the tight Hunzerug hairpin, and he and Rindt were trailing along dejectedly at the end of the field, while the two Matras were in complete command of the race and quite unchallenged. Siffert, in Walker’s Lotus 49, Attwood in the works BRM V12 and Oliver in the second Lotus 49B were running in close company, and keeping up with them, driving very smoothly, was the swarthy little Swiss driver, Silvio Moser, in Vogele’s 1966 Brabham-Repco V8.

On lap 19 Stewart lapped Brabham, who was in a sad ninth position, and on the next lap he would have lapped McLaren, but the New Zealander forestalled him by overdoing the braking at the end of the long straight and going well off the road at the entrance to the Tarzan hairpin.

McLaren was out of the race and would undoubtedly have preferred to have stayed on the road and been lapped, but conditions were so wet and slippery that everyone looked as if they were going to go straight on when they put the brakes on.

As Beltoise started his 21st lap and braked for the Tarzan corner his throttle slides did not shut properly, because of rain and sand in them, and he had some busy moments, using all the road, a lot of the sandy edge and bounced along the wire netting fence.

It looked as though Beltoise’s race was over, but he did not give up and fought the car back on to the road and carried on after a further big moment on another corner on the next lap, he stopped at the pits and the slides were washed out with petrol and he was away again, but he had dropped to seventh place, almost a whole lap behind his team-mate.

While he was having his pit stop Rodriguez had forced his BRM through the spray and past the Ferrari of Ickx into fourth place and Brabham’s engine had died on him, and in trying to stop on the brakes alone he had gone off the road almost next to McLaren.

With his battery being down on charge, he could not restart the engine and was forced to retire, but wisely removed his car from its vulnerable position on the outside of the hairpin, pushing it across the track to the infield.

“Whatever type of Firestone was on the Honda it was depressing and getting nowhere”

During all this Hulme had done one more slow lap and then given up, as his engine refused to run properly. Having got nowhere at all on his rain tyres by Firestone, Surtees stopped again for a further change of tyres, but it made little difference to his progress and even though the two Matras were running on different types of Dunlop tyres there was still a feeling that tyres were the reason for the superiority of the French-built chassis.

Whatever type of Firestone was on the Honda it was depressing and getting nowhere, and there isn’t a better wet-weather driver than Surtees, so perhaps the French-built Matras were handling better than the Lotus, Ferrari, BRM, Brabham and Honda.

From his seventh position after his pit stop Beltoise climbed steadily back up to second position. He passed Gurney fairly easily, having no trouble with Ickx, for on lap 29 the Belgian boy did a pirouette on the wet track as he put the power on out of the Hunzerug hairpin, Amon was no problem, for his Ferrari was no more controllable than his team-mate’s, but he was much more skilled at throttle control, but Rodriguez took a little longer to pass, the Matra V12 eventually out-accelerating the BRM up the hill behind the pits.

This brought Beltoise back into third position, 20 seconds behind Hill, and for a while the rain stopped and the track showed signs of drying. They were now on lap 33 and Stewart had lapped Gurney, while Moser was obviously very happy and had forced his Brabham past Attwood and Siffert. Right at the back of the field were Rindt and Surtees, both feeling very unhappy.

Leading the race with complete control Stewart relentlessly lapped all the other runners, and equally relentlessly Beltoise was catching Hill’s Lotus, the gap falling steadily from 20 seconds to 15 seconds, to 10 seconds, to seven seconds, the V12 Matra never missing a beat.

At 45 laps, half-distance, Stewart had lapped all but Hill and Beltoise, the V12 Matra now only four seconds behind the Lotus. Then came Rodriguez, Amon, Gurney, Ickx, Moser, Siffert and Attwood, the last three still in close company, and tailing along at the back, Oliver, Courage, Bonnier and Surtees; Rindt had given up the unequal struggle, delicacy and finesse not coming naturally to him.

“While Hill skated along, feeling anything but in control of his Lotus, Beltoise closed the gap and passed the Lotus”

While Hill skated along, feeling anything but in control of his Lotus, Beltoise closed the gap and passed the Lotus as they ended the 50th lap, and at the same time Ickx got abreast of Gurney, having made up for his spin earlier.

These two had just lapped Moser, and the little Swiss tucked in behind Gurney’s Brabham and kept up his pace, drawing away from Siffert and Attwood, who had been with him. Heavy rain started again, being really torrential on the far side of the circuit and Courage suddenly spun off the road and out of the race on what was virtually a straight part of the circuit.

Gurney spun at Hunzerug, but continued, and Oliver’s engine became waterlogged and he stopped at the pits to have things dried out. Gurney was in trouble with his goggles and stopped after the Tarzan bend and Amon decided the rain was going to fall forever and stopped at the pits to have some very knobbly-tread tyres fitted to his Ferrari.

In great clouds of spray Stewart lapped Hill, who was not attempting to keep with Beltoise, this being on lap 54, and on lap 57 Stewart lapped the V12 Matra. In the heavy rain Gurney was driving without goggles, and Siffert stopped at the pits, unable to see properly and being bothered with gear-changing; as he was nowhere in the running he did one more lap and gave up.

Amon’s tyre-change stop dropped him to eighth place, behind Moser, and the handling of the Ferrari seemed little better on the different tyres. On lap 61 Hill lost control on the Tarzan corner, went off the road on the outside of the bend, struck a fence post, which went between the nose and the left-hand wheel, and tore off the fin on that side. He was able to reverse back and rejoin the road, conscious that there was something bent in the steering, and that he had crashed because the throttle slides had not shut properly.

While all this was going on Rodriguez went by, into third place, but in no position to challenge the Matras. Two laps later Gurney went off into the rough briefly and sand got in his throttle slides, so after some more wild slides he pulled into the pits and packed it in.

At the beginning of this heavy rainstorm Surtees had crept quietly into the pits and gone home, with water in all the wrong places, and when the rain stopped and the track showed signs of drying, around lap 65, there were only ten cars still running, Stewart having lapped all the nine others, some of them many times.

With the race average being so low, relative to what it would have been in the dry, the length of the race seemed interminable and at 70 laps it was all settled and just a question of everyone surviving to the finish.

Having lapped the second place car, Stewart now decided he could ease up and give his injured wrist a rest, so he let Beltoise go by and “unlap” himself. Rodriguez was a secure third, Hill a doubtful fourth, Ickx in fifth place, Moser going extremely well and having no trouble with the water, in sixth place, Amon a hopeless seventh, and Attwood, Bonnier and Oliver trailing along at the back.

Stewart continued to lap slower and slower, but he still had over a minute and a half lead on the VI2 Matra, which had now lapped Hill, and steadily the race ran out. To qualify as a finisher a car had to cover 90% of the race distance, which was 81 laps, and having done that Hill went off into the fence at Tarzan corner again, this time collecting a fence post between the nose and the right front wheel, knocking off the other fin, but also breaking the front suspension, so that was that and he walked back to the pits to apologise to Chapman for making a mistake. The two Matras cruised to the finish on the same lap, everyone else a lap or more behind, and Hill’s mistake let Moser up into fifth place, which he well deserved.

This was the first Grand Prix victory for Matra, having led the S African race with Stewart in the prototype Cosworth V8-engined car, led the Spanish GP with Beltoise in a new lighter car, led at Monte Carlo, with Servoz-Gavin in the first 1968 car, led the Belgian GP with Stewart in the same car, and now they had won the Dutch GP with Stewart in the newer and lighter car that raced in Spain.

More important to the French team was their V12-engined car finishing second, for it was only its third race, and within six months of it first running. This was progress that many people would have enjoyed.

Ziftings in the Zand

• Sad to see Dan Gurney and his mechanics with an old Brabham; reminded them of 1965.
• Dunlop were justifiably jubilant with first and second places. A Grand Prix victory has eluded them for far too long.
• Although Esso are out of racing, their Dutch branch were sponsoring the Press information printing.
• Is the McLaren team progressing backwards or have all the others caught up. Their performances at Brands Hatch and Silverstone at the beginning of the season look like being the “flashes in this year’s pan”
• Cosworth V8 engines have now won every Championship Grand Prix since the U.S.A. race last year. Seven Grand Prix races in a row, as well as two minor events.
• The “Yes, but . . .” department was in full song after the race, with excuses about tyres, plugs, engines, electrics, water, goggles, and everything else. Stewart was very pleased to have given victory to Matra in their first season of Grand Prix racing.
• Has the day of “the new boy in Grand Prix racing” arrived? Of the first seven placemen Stewart was the most experienced, being in his fourth year.