1970 Monaco Grand Prix

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  1970 Monaco Grand Prix

Race details
Race 3 of 13 in the 1970 Formula One season.
Date	May 10, 1970
Official name	XXVIII Grand Prix de Monaco
Location	Circuit de Monaco, Monte Carlo, Monaco
Course	Street circuit 1.954 mi / 3.145 km
Distance	80 laps, 156.337 mi / 251.600 km
Weather	Sunny and warm
Pole position
Driver	Jackie Stewart	March-Ford
Time	1:24.0
Fastest lap
Driver	Jochen Rindt	Lotus-Ford
Time	1:23.2 on lap 80
Podium
First	Jochen Rindt	Lotus-Ford
Second	Jack Brabham	Brabham-Ford
Third	Henri Pescarolo	Matra

The 1970 Monaco Grand Prix was a Formula One race held at the Circuit de Monaco on May 10, 1970. It was the third race of the 1970 Formula One season.

[edit] Report

There were no significant changes in the drivers' lineup for Monaco, and the only news was Ronnie Peterson, entering in a non-works March. The Lotus team decided to bring the old 49 chassis instead of the new 72, despite testing it in a non-championship race at Silverstone a couple of weeks earlier. In qualifying, March swept the front row, with Jackie Stewart on pole (for the Tyrrell team) and Chris Amon alongside him. Third was Denny Hulme's McLaren, and fourth the Brabham of Jack Brabham; behind them was the Ferrari of Jacky Ickx. The first Lotus driver was Jochen Rindt, qualyfing in only eighth place.

Despite the rain in the previous days, the sun shone on race day, and the track was dry. At the start, Stewart led the field, with Amon, Brabham, Ickx and Jean-Pierre Beltoise behind him; on the second lap, Beltoise passed Ickx. Stewart began to pull away, and so the order remained unchanged until lap 12, when Ickx retired with a driveshaft failure. On lap 22 Beltoise, who in the meantime went into fourth, retired with transmission problems; on the same lap Brabham passed Amon into second place. It seemed Stewart could comfortably repeat the victory he took in Spain, but on lap 27 his March began misfiring, and he stopped in the pits dropping off. This left Brabham in front, with Amon, Hulme and Rindt, who worked his way from the middle of the pack, behind. In his first race, Peterson was doing well, in seventh place; meanwhile the engine failed on Jackie Oliver's BRM, leaving the marshalls some hard work to clean up all the oil he dropped on the track.

At about the same time, Hulme had problems with the gearing of his McLaren, the shift jumping gears, so he dropped back behind Rindt and Pescarolo; on lap 62 Amon's suspension failed, and he was forced to retire, leaving the Austrian in second place, nine seconds behind Brabham. He then increased his pace, and towards the last laps he was on the tail of the Australian. Brabham's victory seemed to be on the way though, as he resisted to all the pressure that Rindt brought on him. But the unbeliavable happened: on the last lap, Brabham misjudged the braking into the Gazomètre, the very last corner, and went straight into into the straw bales, handing the victory to Rindt (a victory greeted by a big jump of joy by Colin Chapman). Brabham quickly reversed and finished the race in second position. Third was Pescarolo in a Matra, while the remaining points positions were rounded out by Hulme, Graham Hill (who worked his way up from the last spot on the grid) and Pedro Rodríguez.

[edit] Classification

Pos	No	Driver	Constructor	Laps	Time/Retired	Grid	Points
1	3	Jochen Rindt	Lotus-Ford	80	1:54:37.4	8	9
2	5	Jack Brabham	Brabham-Ford	80	23.1	4	6
3	9	Henri Pescarolo	Matra	80	51.4	7	4
4	11	Denny Hulme	McLaren-Ford	80	+ 1:28.3	3	3
5	1	Graham Hill	Lotus-Ford	79	+ 1 Lap	16	2
6	17	Pedro Rodríguez	BRM	78	+ 2 Laps	15	1
7	23	Ronnie Peterson	March-Ford	78	+ 2 Laps	12
8	19	Jo Siffert	March-Ford	76	Out of Fuel	11
Ret	28	Chris Amon	March-Ford	60	Suspension	2
NC	24	Piers Courage	De Tomaso-Ford	58	Not Classified	9
Ret	21	Jackie Stewart	March-Ford	57	Engine	1
Ret	16	Jackie Oliver	BRM	42	Engine	14
Ret	8	Jean-Pierre Beltoise	Matra	21	Differential	6
Ret	12	Bruce McLaren	McLaren-Ford	19	Suspension	10
Ret	14	John Surtees	McLaren-Ford	14	Oil Pressure	13
Ret	26	Jacky Ickx	Ferrari	11	Halfshaft	5
DNQ	10	Andrea de Adamich	McLaren-Alfa Romeo
DNQ	6	Rolf Stommelen	Brabham-Ford
DNQ	15	George Eaton	BRM
DNQ	2	John Miles	Lotus-Ford
DNQ	20	Johnny Servoz-Gavin	March-Ford

[edit] References

• The Official Formula 1 website. Retrieved on 2008-01-15.
• Lang, Mike (1982). Grand Prix! Vol 2. Haynes Publishing Group, pp119-121. ISBN 0-85429-321-3. 

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