Big Red
CAMPAIGNING CAMARO
Again, two heats — each over just three very long laps. Denny paced himself beautifully and finished second to Lorenzo Bandini. Davis won his heat from Argentinean Juan Manuel Bordeu and another Italian who would win in F1 for Ferrari, Ludovico Scarfiotti. The final, on 15 August 1960, was over seven laps. Also in the final were future F1 drivers John Love from Rhodesia and Giancarlo Baghetti, but no one could touch the Kiwi. “He was outstanding, and although I had suspected before then that he might have F1 potential, that was the race that convinced me how good Denny was. It was probably his biggest win at that time, and it didn’t go unnoticed,” says Gavin.
None other than Juan Manuel Fangio presented Denny with the trophy, and as Bill recalled: “Denny handed him his autograph book in which Fangio wrote some nice words that roughly translate to ‘To the very clever winner of the Grand Prix of Pescara.’ We left straight after prize giving, heading back to England, I was driving when we both woke up doing about 70 miles an hour in a ditch.” Shortly after returning from the ditch, Denny, George Lawton, and manager Feo Stanton headed for Scandinavia.
Bill had never intended going as he continued his quest to break into the world of motor racing journalism but, even six decades on, he recalls the emotion of learning of George’s death in Denmark. “It was devastating — Feo asked me to phone George’s father in Whangarei. Gosh that was hard …”
A month after his big win in Italy, Denny made his F1 debut in a nonchampionship race at Snetterton where he finished fifth in the Yeoman Credit Cooper. That ride had been intended for fellow Kiwi Driver to Europe in 1960 Lawton — a talent that sadly never had the opportunity to blossom on the world stage.
In mentioning Italian racetracks, it is 40 years since the only official Italian GP that was not held at Monza. In 1980, the famous Autodrome was being refurbished and so the F1 fraternity assembled some 270km to the southeast at Imola, near Italy’s ‘food capital’, Bologna. The Italians had been angling for a second GP for some time, and having staged a successful race at Imola in September 1980, a new GP was introduced in 1981, named after the small principality a further 100km to the south-east. The San Marino GP had an unbroken run at Imola until 2006 but will forever be associated as the track where Ayrton Senna was killed in 1994.
As a matter of interest, this is not the only example of a GP being held away from the nation it is named after. Since motor racing was banned in Switzerland following the Le Mans disaster in 1955, the Swiss GP has been held in France, twice, while in 1997 and ’98, the Luxembourg GP was held in nearby Germany. It begged the question of how the second of ‘back-to-back’ GPS planned for 2020’s post-covid-19 abbreviated F1 season might be styled. Well, we now have an answer. The second race in Austria will be the Styrian GP, while a week after, the British will be back at Silverstone for — not the Scottish or the Welsh — but the Anniversary GP, where inevitably we’ll be told, incorrectly, that it’s 70 years since the birth of F1. Don’t believe it!