Ecurie espadon
The Ecurie Espadon was a Swiss motorsport team from the early 1950s.
The team was founded at the beginning of the 1951 season as a racing community of the two Swiss racing drivers Rudolf Fischer and Peter Staechelin . Accordingly, the German translation of the team name - Stachelfisch - should represent the initial syllables of both names. But there is also a widespread theory that the team was named after a fish restaurant that Fischer is said to have operated in Zurich.
For the racing commitments the team were two 1951 Ferrari - Monopostos a new available for fishermen Tipo 212 with a V12 engine with 2.6 liter displacement, which as a testbed for the 1954 current 2.5-liter Formula 1 built was, as well as a Tipo 125/166 for Staechelin, for which both a charged 1.5-liter Formula 1 engine and a 2-liter engine for use in Formula 2 races were available.
However, Staechelin soon withdrew from the team, so that Fischer was solely responsible for the races. After the debut at the Gran Premio di Siracusa, which is not part of the World Championship (there still two cars at the start), Fischer also competed in the World Championship races in the Swiss Grand Prix and the German Grand Prix . He won the Formula 2 races in Aix-les-Bains and Angoulême and was able to secure the Swiss racing car championship with daily victories in a number of hill climbs.
For the 1952 season , Fischer acquired one of the new Formula 2 Ferrari 500s , and in that year the drivers' world championship was held with Formula 2 racing cars. The model quickly proved to be the absolutely dominant construction and Fischer was able to achieve fourth place in the world championship as the most successful private driver with a second place at the Swiss Grand Prix and third place in Germany. Peter Hirt initially drove the twelve-cylinder from the previous year regularly ; however, the car was also made available to Fritz Riess and Rudolf Schoeller for individual races before Hans Stuck was used in the final races of the season .
In 1953 Fischer initially retired from active racing as a driver, allegedly out of disappointment that, despite his success in 1952, he was not offered a contract as a works driver with Scuderia Ferrari . Fischer therefore rented his Ferrari 500 to the German industrialist Kurt Adolff , who started with it in the runs for the German championship. After Adolff's accident at the AVUS race and the equally disappointing failure at the German Grand Prix, Fischer drove the car himself again at the Schauinsland hill climb . At the Swiss Grand Prix that followed, Peter Hirt was at the wheel again, while Max de Terra drove the old twelve-cylinder went to the start. This was also the last appearance of the Ecurie Espadon, after 1953 the team stopped playing.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Report in Motor Rundschau , January 1951
- ↑ The Ecurie Espadon in TNF at autosport.com (engl.)
- ^ Report in the Automobil Revue , issue 43/1951 of October 3, 1951
- ^ Reports in Automobil Revue , issue 26/1952 of June 4, 1952
- ↑ Reinald Schumann: Motorsport in Germany 1945–1955 - From self-made to the Silver Arrow , p. 179
- ^ Report in Motor-Rundschau , Issue 8/1953
- ^ Report in Automobil Revue , No. 35/1953 of August 12, 1953
- ^ Report in Automobil Revue , No. 37/1953 of August 26, 1953