Grande Prêmio Presidente Medici 1974

Autódromo Emilio Medici in Brasília

The Grande Prêmio Presidente Medici was a Formula 1 race held on February 3, 1974 in Brazil that had no world championship status. There was only one edition of the race.

Reports

background

Name of the race: Emílio Garrastazu Médici

In 1972 a Formula 1 race was held in Brazil for the first time . Since 1973 , the Brazilian Grand Prix World Championship status. In 1974 , the national organizers, with the support of Bernie Ecclestone, attempted to establish another Formula 1 race in the country. They announced the Grande Prêmio Presidente Medici, which was scheduled a week after the Grand Prix of Brazil in the state capital Brasília and was named after the then Brazilian President Emílio Garrastazu Médici . The race served in general to profile Brasília as a sports center and in particular to inaugurate the Autódromo Emílio Medici, which was only completed at the end of 1973 . Unlike the Brazilian Grand Prix, the Grande Prêmio Presidente Medici was not part of the Formula 1 World Championship.

In the British media, the race was mainly due to the fact that the so-called mail robber Ronny Biggs was staying in the same hotel as most of the drivers and team members at the time of the race. The Grande Prêmio Presidente Medici was also the race in which the future world champion Nelson Piquet first appeared in the pit lane of a Formula 1 event.

Six weeks after the race, Emílio Médici lost the presidency. Under his successor Ernesto Geisel there was no further edition of the race. The racetrack was renamed Autódromo Brasília in 1974 and later into Autódromo Internacional Nelson Piquet .

Teams and drivers

The organizers tried to motivate the Formula 1 teams to take part in the race with an exceptionally high entry fee. Nevertheless, the starting field in Brasília was weak. While 14 teams with 28 cars had entered the World Championship run in Interlagos a week earlier, only eight teams with 12 drivers appeared at the Grande Prêmio Presidente Medici. All teams entered were from Great Britain . The Scuderia Ferrari and the Lotus factory team never showed up, McLaren , Tyrrell and Williams only brought one car to the start. With the exception of Hesketh Racing , no customer team competed.

The driver line-up largely corresponded to that of the Brazilian Grand Prix. There was only a change at Brabham: Instead of Richard Robarts , Wilson Fittipaldi drove for Bernie Ecclestone's team. Fittipaldi contested his only Formula 1 race of the season here.

Racetrack

The Grande Prêmio Presidente Medici was the first race from the Autódromo Emilio Medici. It went over 40 laps of 5.476 km each and had a total distance of 219.03 km.

training

Winner and runner-up in training: Emerson Fittipaldi in the McLaren M23

The first training took place in damp weather conditions. The Brazilian Emerson Fittipaldi in the McLaren set the fastest times. During the second training session the conditions were dry; Compared to the first session, the lap times were now up to six seconds faster. In the qualification, Carlos Reutemann (Brabham) took pole position, followed by Emerson Fittipaldi, Jody Scheckter (Tyrrell) and Carlos Pace ( Team Surtees ). The first four drivers were all within a quarter of a second, while the rest of the field were at least two seconds behind them. The last qualifier was James Hunt , whose team Hesketh Racing had initially planned to bring the newly designed Hesketh 308 to the start. Due to technical problems with the new car, however, Hunt drove the March 731 here again , which the team had already used in the previous season.

run

The race is generally described as monotonous ("drab") in the reporting: Since it was not about world championship points, the drivers drove with little commitment. Jody Scheckter made it clear in an interview that he would have approached the race differently if it had been a world championship run. The teams also tried to save tires and urged a careful driving style. Like a week before at the Brazilian Grand Prix, the winner was Emerson Fittipaldi, who crossed the finish line a tenth of a second ahead of Jody Scheckter. Williams driver Arturo Merzario came in third, Jochen Mass (Surtees) fourth .

Registration list

team	No.	driver	chassis	engine	tires
Eleven Team Tyrrell	3	Jody Scheckter	Tyrrell 006	Cosworth DFV V8	G
Yardley Team McLaren	5	Emerson Fittipaldi	McLaren M23	Cosworth DFV V8	G
Motor Racing Developments	7th	Carlos Reutemann	Brabham BT44	Cosworth DFV V8	G
	8th	Wilson Fittipaldi
March engineering	9	Hans-Joachim Stuck	March 741	Cosworth DFV V8	G
	10	Howden Ganley
Team Motul BRM	14th	Jean-Pierre Beltoise	BRM P160E	BRM	F.
	15th	Henri Pescarolo
Bang & Olufsen Team Surtees	18th	Carlos Pace	Surtees TS16	Cosworth DFV V8	G
	19th	Jochen Mass
Frank Williams Racing Cars	20th	Arturo Merzario	Iso-Marlboro FW02	Cosworth DFV V8	F.
Hesketh Racing	24	James Hunt	March 731	Cosworth DFV V8	F.

Classifications

Qualifying

Item	driver	constructor	time
01	Carlos Reutemann	Brabham - Cosworth	1: 51.18
02	Emerson Fittipaldi	McLaren - Cosworth	1: 51.27
03	Jody Scheckter	Tyrrell - Cosworth	1: 51.40
04th	Carlos Pace	Surtees - Cosworth	1: 51.40
05	Arturo Merzario	Williams - Cosworth	1: 53.43
06th	Jean-Pierre Beltoise	BRM	1: 54.44
07th	Wilson Fittipaldi	Brabham - Cosworth	1: 54.62
08th	Jochen Mass	Surtees - Cosworth	1: 55.53
09	Henri Pescarolo	BRM	1: 55.88
10	Howden Ganley	March - Cosworth	1: 57.61
11	Hans-Joachim Stuck	March - Cosworth	1: 58.10
12	James Hunt	March - Cosworth	2: 04.95

run

Item	driver	constructor	Round	time	begin
01	Emerson Fittipaldi	McLaren - Cosworth	40	1: 15_22.75	2
02	Jody Scheckter	Tyrrell - Cosworth	40	1: 15: 35.15	3
03	Arturo Merzario	Williams - Cosworth	40	1: 15: 49.85	5
04th	Jochen Mass	Surtees - Cosworth	40	1: 17: 01.59	8th
05	Wilson Fittipaldi	Brabham - Cosworth	39	+ 1 lap	7th
06th	Howden Ganley	March - Cosworth	39	+ 1 lap	10
07th	Henri Pescarolo	BRM	39	+ 1 lap	9
08th	Jean-Pierre Beltoise	BRM	38	+ 2 round	6th
09	Carlos Pace	Surtees - Cosworth	35	+ 5 round	4th
10	Hans-Joachim Stuck	March - Cosworth	34	+ 6 round	11
-	Carlos Reutemann	Brabham - Cosworth	12	DNF	1
-	James Hunt	March - Cosworth	1	DNF	12

Web links

• Statistics of the Grande Prêmio Presidente Medici on the website www.silhouet.com
• History of the Grande Prêmio Presidente Medici des on the website http://en.espn.co.uk

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} History of the Grande Prêmio Presidente Medici des on the website http://en.espn.co.uk (accessed April 16, 2015).