Looking Back

As the cars line up before practice with photographers all around, John Surtees looks into Bob Daley’s camera from his Ferrari 158/F1. The scene is at practice before the Monaco Grand Prix which would be run on May 10, 1964. The Ferrari entry for Surtees was the first championship race appearance of the 1.5 liter V8 which would soon replace the V6 “Dino” motor which had been a Ferrari Grand Prix staple since 1961. The V8 should have been ready in 1963 along with the new “Aero” chassis which used a steel space frame with riveted-on alloy panels, a kind of semi-monocoque design, but development of these new concepts from Mauro Forghieri had taken longer than expected. At Monaco Lorenzo Bandini had to make do with the older V6 although fitted to the new chassis.

Surtees is seen here on the left at the Chicane during practice. The same two Ferraris had finished 1-2 at Syracuse, a non-championship race often used as a kind of warm-up by Ferrari. But Surtees’ Ferrari was still in a development stage at Monaco, unchanged from Syracuse, and it retired from the 100 lap race with transmission failure at lap 15. A similar problem was experienced later by Bandini. However, the new design came right during the year, especially for Surtees who preferred the V8 over the late season introduction of a flat 12 cylinder motor known as the 1512/F1.

Surtees became the Champion in a very close contest with Graham Hill who drove for BRM, and had won at Monaco. The points system in the  early 1960s allowed a driver to count only the best six finishes. This gave Surtees 40 points for the year, being able count all his finishes, versus 39 for Hill who had actually scored 41 points during the year, but could only count 39 of them for the Championship.

Photos by Robert Daley ©The Klemantaski Collection – http://www.klemcoll.com

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Tags: Ferrari, Graham Hill, John Surtees, klemcoll, Monaco