3 SHADOW DN5

BEST RESULT 3RD 1975 AUSTRIAN GP POLES 3 SUPERTIME POSITION 5TH DESIGNER TONY SOUTHGATE

THIS IS THE ONLY CAR ON OUR LIST THAT SCORED three pole positions, and it was also an F1 winner, thanks to Tom Pryce’s victory in the non-championship 1975 Race of Champions at Brands Hatch. Across the season, Shadow was faster than both March and Hesketh, which took a win apiece.

“The car worked aerodynamically – it was better than the opposition,” asserts its designer Tony Southgate. “It was the first car I developed on a rolling road. It made the centre of pressure more accurate and when it got to the track it just worked.

“At Interlagos Jean-pierre Jarier was the only one who could go flat through the first corner. It was highdownforce so it was no good at high-speed tracks. It was competitive but we let ourselves down with reliability.”

Jarier took pole for the first two races of 1975. Crown-wheel-and-pinion failure prevented him from even starting in Argentina, but he dominated in Brazil, having been 0.8 seconds clear of reigning champion Emerson Fittipaldi’s Mclaren in qualifying.

Jarier was eight laps from home when the cam arm of his fuel metering unit seized. “No-one had ever had that before and it would be us!” says Southgate. “After the race the car started up and it never happened again.”

Shadow also suffered with Hewland’s new TL gearbox, which was supposed to be stronger, but suffered teething problems.

It wasn’t just unreliability that hurt the DN5, though – having two inexperienced drivers didn’t help on occasion. “At Monaco we were super-quick, although Niki Lauda beat us to pole, and then both guys crashed,” says Southgate. Pryce then spun out of the British GP, after taking pole, though he was not alone in making an error on a day when a sudden shower arrived.

“It was a bit like that all the way through the year,” adds Southgate. “We had silly problems – some of our making, some not.

“If Lotus had the cars they’d have done much better. They had more than twice the budget and got the best engines you could get.

“We also got distracted at Shadow. We did F5000 and Jarier convinced [team founder] Don Nichols to put a Matra V12 engine in the DN5 [to create the DN7]. There had to be more cooling and a bigger fuel tank. It was heavier and bigger so it went the same speed. Jarier did two races and then decided he wanted to go back to the Cosworth car.

“We lost the edge because of other distractions.”