John Love (racing driver)

**John Love (racing driver)**
Nation:	Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1962–1963) Southern Rhodesia (1964–1968) Rhodesia (1969–1972) ; ;
Automobile world championship
First start:	1962 Grand Prix of South Africa
Last start:	1972 South African Grand Prix
Constructors
	1962–1967 John Love 1968–1970 Team Gunston 1971 Team Peco 1972 Team Gunston
statistics
World Cup balance:	World Cup eleventh ( 1967 )
World Cup points :	6th
Podiums :	1
Leadership laps :	14 over 57.316 km

John Maxwell Lineham Love (born December 7, 1924 in Bulawayo ; † April 25, 2005 ibid) was a Formula 1 racing driver from Southern Rhodesia , now Zimbabwe .

Career

Beginnings

During World War II , John Love served in the British Army. Among other things, he was used as a tank driver in Italy. In the 1950s, Love took part in numerous Formula 3 races in southern Africa. His first major success was winning the 1959 Angola Grand Prix in a five-year-old Jaguar .

In 1960 Love moved to the UK. Here he was involved in Formula Junior . In 1961 he drove with Tony Maggs in Ken Tyrrell's Formula Junior Team. He finished the championship in third place. In 1962 Love participated again in the Formula Junior Championship, in addition he drove touring car races for the works team of the British Motor Corporation (BMC). Love had a serious accident in a race in Albi, France in September 1962. While trying to avoid Tony Maggs, his car went off the track and hit an earth wall. Love broke his left arm and was out for the rest of the year. Love's left arm was immobile for several months. As a result, he was no longer given a cockpit with a European team. In the fall of 1962 he bought a Formula 1 racing car from Cooper , with which he returned to Rhodesia.

South African Formula 1 Championship

Love has been in Formula 1 since 1962. In the 1960s, Love was one of the most successful motorsport drivers in Africa. He won the South African Formula 1 Championship six times in a row (1964 to 1969); He also won his home race, the Grand Prix of Rhodesia, six times . He mostly had British racing cars that were technically superior to the many self-constructed vehicles of his South African competitors ( Cooper T55 , Brabham BT20 , Lotus 49 ). For the 1971 season Love took over a newly built March 701 (chassis number 701/10), which, however, did not prove to be competitive. His competitor Dave Charlton , who relied on vehicles from Lotus , dominated the South African Formula 1 championship from 1971 in a similar way as Love had previously done.

Automobile world championship

In addition to the races in the national championship, Love also competed in some races in the automobile world championship from 1962 to 1972 . He made his debut on December 29, 1962 at the Grand Prix of South Africa . Love always reported his private vehicles; often the report was made under the name Team Gunston . He contested a total of nine world championship races, all on the occasion of the South African Grand Prix .

Love's most successful race was the 1967 South African Grand Prix . He competed here with a Cooper T79 , which was powered by a 2.7 liter four-cylinder engine from Coventry Climax . It was the car that Bruce McLaren had used in the 1966 Tasman series . At that time, the competing works teams already had mostly 3.0-liter engines, which fully exploited the displacement limit of the regulations that came into force in 1966. Regardless of the poor performance of his car, he qualified for fifth place on the grid. He started the race ahead of Graham Hill in the works Lotus and Jochen Rindt in the works Cooper. In the race, Love was in first position from lap 60; he led the race for 13 laps. With seven laps to go, Love had to relinquish the lead to Pedro Rodríguez , who drove a factory Cooper T79. Rodríguez won the race, Love finished second.

At the 1964 Italian Grand Prix , Love was also given the opportunity to drive a works car for the Cooper team alongside Bruce McLaren. Love did not qualify for the race. He achieved a lap time of 1: 48.500 minutes in qualifying. This made him 11.1 seconds slower than John Surtees , who had achieved pole position in the Ferrari 158 . His time was more than five seconds above the lap time required to qualify.

John Love died of cancer at the age of 80 in his hometown of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

statistics

Statistics in the automobile world championship

These statistics include all of the driver's participations in the World Automobile Championship, which is now known as the Formula 1 World Championship .

general overview

season	team	chassis	engine	run	Victories	Second	Third	Poles	nice Race laps	Points	WM-Pos.
1962	John Love	Cooper T55	Climax 1.5 L4	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
1963	John Love	Cooper T55	Climax 1.5 L4	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
1965	John Love	Cooper T55	Climax 1.5 V8	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
1967	John Love	Cooper T79	Climax 2.8 L4	1	-	1	-	-	-	6th	11.
1968	Team Gunston	Brabham BT20	Repco 3.0 V8	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
1969	Team Gunston	Lotus 49	Ford-Cosworth 3.0 V8	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
1970	Team Gunston	Lotus 49	Ford-Cosworth 3.0 V8	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
1971	Team Peco / Gunston	March 701	Ford-Cosworth 3.0 V8	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
1972	Team Gunston	Surtees TS9	Ford-Cosworth 3.0 V8	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
total				9	-	1	-	-	-	6th

Single results

season	1	2	8th	9	10
1962
1962				8th
1963
1963					9
1964
1964			DNQ
1965
1965	DNF
1967
1967	2
1968
1968	9
1969
1969	DNF
1970
1970	8th
1971
1971	DNF
1972
1972		16

Legend
colour	abbreviation	meaning
gold	-	victory
silver	-	2nd place
bronze	-	3rd place
green	-	Placement in the points
blue	-	Classified outside the point ranks
violet	DNF	Race not finished (did not finish)
violet	NC	not classified
red	DNQ	did not qualify
red	DNPQ	failed in pre-qualification (did not pre-qualify)
black	DSQ	disqualified
White	DNS	not at the start (did not start)
White	WD	withdrawn
Light Blue	PO	only participated in the training (practiced only)
Light Blue	TD	Friday test driver
without	DNP	did not participate in the training (did not practice)
	INJ	injured or sick
	EX	excluded
	DNA	did not arrive
	C.	Race canceled
		no participation in the World Cup
other	^P / bold	Pole position
	_SR / italic	Fastest race lap
	*	not at the finish, but counted due to the distance covered
	()	Streak results
	underlined	Leader in the overall standings

literature

Ken Stewart, Norman Reich: Sun on the Grid. Grand Prix and Endurance Racing in Southern Africa. London 1967, ISBN 1-870519-49-3 .

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b Stewart, Reich: Sun on the Grid. P. 118.
↑ Biography Loves on the website rhodesiansportprofiles.blogspot.de
↑ Grandprix - Internet site: Drivers: John Love. From: grandprix.com , accessed November 6, 2012 .
↑ Statistics of the Grand Prix of South Africa 1967 on the website www.motorsport-total.com (accessed on March 26, 2013).
↑ ^a ^b 500race - Internet site: John Love. (No longer available online.) At: 500race.org , archived from the original on May 31, 2012 ; Retrieved November 6, 2012 .

personal data
SURNAME	Love, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Love, John Maxwell Lineham (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Rhodesian automobile racer
DATE OF BIRTH	December 7, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bulawayo
DATE OF DEATH	April 25, 2005
Place of death	Bulawayo

[Sungrid-1] A ^b Stewart, Reich: Sun on the Grid. P. 118.

[2] Biography Loves on the website rhodesiansportprofiles.blogspot.de

[Grandprix-3] Grandprix - Internet site: Drivers: John Love. From: grandprix.com , accessed November 6, 2012 .

[4] Statistics of the Grand Prix of South Africa 1967 on the website www.motorsport-total.com (accessed on March 26, 2013).

[500race-5] 500race - Internet site: John Love. (No longer available online.) At: 500race.org , archived from the original on May 31, 2012 ; Retrieved November 6, 2012 .