Team Gunston

Team Gunston

Surname
Companies	Team Gunston John Love
Company headquarters	Bulawayo , Rhodesia
Team boss	John Love
statistics
First Grand Prix	South Africa 1962
Last Grand Prix	South Africa 1975
Race driven	11
Constructors' championship	-
Drivers World Championship	-
Race wins	0
Pole positions	0
Fastest laps	0
Points	0

Team Gunston (1962-1967: John Love Racing ) was in Southern Rhodesia or Rhodesia resident Motorsport - racing team , which in the 1960s and 1970s in the South African Formula 1 Championship took and three times at the Grand Prix of South Africa , a Formula 1 race with world championship status. Gunston was one of the most successful teams in the South African racing series.

history

The Bulawayo- based team was founded in the summer of 1962 by the Rhodesian racing driver John Love . Love had competed in Europe in 1960 and 1961 for the team of Ken Tyrrell in Formula Junior and had finished the 1961 season in third place overall. In 1962 he returned to Rhodesia. From his earnings at Tyrrell he had bought a used Cooper T55 , with which he would take part in Formula 1 races in southern Africa. By 1967, Love started the team under his own name. At the beginning of the 1968 season he signed a sponsorship agreement with the Rhodesian Gunston Cigarette Company , which he will use in future for his racing team.

South African Formula 1 Championship

Since 1962, John Love's racing team has regularly participated in the South African Formula 1 Championship, a series of races on circuits in southern Africa that was held according to Formula 1 rules and was predominantly contested by regional drivers.

Gunston initially used a Cooper T55 , later a Cooper T79 and from 1968 a Lotus 49 . The Lotus was the 49 R3 chassis, which had been used in the 1967 Formula 1 season by works driver Graham Hill in five world championship races and in one run in 1968 before Gunston took it over.

In the second half of the 1960s, Love was the most successful driver in the South African Formula 1 series. From 1964 to 1969 he won the championship six times in a row. He also won his home race, the Grand Prix of Rhodesia , six times.

In 1970 Gunston and John Loves' dominance ended. The South African Dave Charlton , supported by Gunston's rival brand Lucky Strike , who started using a younger Lotus 49 and later a Lotus 72 from 1969 , dominated the South African series in the early 1970s. Team Gunston then changed the race car. The choice fell on a newly built March 701 (chassis no. 701/10), which had achieved some successes with Jackie Stewart and Chris Amon at the beginning of the Formula 1 World Championship in 1970 . The car, however, proved difficult to drive and was unreliable, leaving Gunston unable to compete with Charlton's Lucky Strike Scribante team. A temporary change to a Surtees TS9 was also unsuccessful. From 1972 Gunston drove a Lotus 72 for his part, but could not stop Charlton's triumphant advance.

Team Gunston continued its involvement in regional motorsport in the South African Formula Atlantic Championship , which replaced the local Formula 1 championship in 1976. The team's drivers were Ray Klomfass , Trevor van Rooyen and Basil van Rooyen . In individual races such as the Rand Spring Trophy, which took place on October 6, 1979 in Kyalami , John Love also competed again.

Formula 1 world championship

In addition to participating in the South African races, the Gunston team has been regularly participating in the Grand Prix of South Africa, which had world championship status, since 1962 . The driver was usually John Love, but occasionally other drivers of South African origin also competed for the team.

Team Gunston's most successful race was the 1967 South African Grand Prix . It competed here with John Love and 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 vehicle, Love 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.

Race results (Formula 1 World Championship)

season	chassis	driver	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	10	11	12	13	14th	15th	Points	rank
1962	Cooper T55 - Climax																	0	-
		J. Love									8th
1963	Cooper T55 Climax																	0	-
		J. Love										9
1965	Cooper T55 Climax																	0	-
		J. Love	DNF
1967	Cooper T79 Climax																	6th	11
		J. Love	2
1968																		0	-
	Brabham BT20 - Repco	J. Love	9
	LDS Mk. 3 Repco	S. Tingle	DNF
	Cooper T79 Climax	B. van Rooyen	DNF
1969																		0	-
	Lotus 49 Cosworth	J. Love	DNF
	Brabham BT24 Repco	S. Tingle	8th
1970																		0	-
	Lotus 49 Cosworth	J. Love	8th
	Brabham BT26 Cosworth	P. de Klerk	11
1971																		0	-
	March 701 Cosworth	J. Love	DNF
	Brabham BT26 Cosworth	J. Pretorius	DNF
1972																		0	-
	Surtees TS9 Cosworth	J. Love		16
	Brabham BT33 Cosworth	W. Ferguson		DNS
1974																		0	-
	Lotus 72 Cosworth	I. Scheckter			13
		P. Driver			DNF
1975																		0	-
	Lotus 72 Cosworth	G. Tunmer			11
		E. Keizan			DNF

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)
	NC	not classified
red	DNQ	did not qualify
	DNPQ	failed in pre-qualification (did not pre-qualify)
black	DSQ	disqualified
White	DNS	not at the start (did not start)
	WD	withdrawn
Light Blue	PO	only participated in the training (practiced only)
	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

South African Saloon Car Championship

Team Gunston also competed in the South African Touring Car Championship from at least 1969 to 1972.
Modified Peranas, which Basil Green Motors manufactured based on the Ford Cortina and Ford Capri, were used . The driver was Bob Olthoff .
The Cortina with the number N 201 came second in the championship in 1969, the Capri Z 181 won Group 5 in 1970, and the Capri A2 in 1972 Group 2.

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

1. ^ ^{A b} Stewart, Reich: Sun on the grid , p. 118.
2. ↑ Overview of the South African Formula 1 World Championship on the website www.russell-sheldon.com ( Memento from September 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on March 29, 2013).
3. ↑ Love's regional competitor Dave Charlton was supported by Luckie Strikes. In view of this, the late 1960s and 1970s in South Africa are also referred to as "the years of the tobacco war" ("The Tobacco Wars").
4. ↑ On the racing history of the Lotus 49 R3, see the website www.oldracingcars.com (accessed on March 29, 2013)
5. ↑ Charlton initially drove the Lotus 49R8, which was built at the end of 1968 and was driven by Graham Hill in the 1969 Formula 1 World Championship. See the racing history of the Lotus 49 R8 on the website www.oldracingcars.com ( memento from November 30, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on March 29, 2013).
6. ↑ John Loves biography on the website www.forix.com (accessed March 29, 2013).
7. ^ The South African Formula Atlantic on the website www.oldracingcars.com (accessed on March 30, 2013).
8. ↑ Statistics of the Grand Prix of South Africa 1967 on the website www.motorsport-total.com (accessed on March 26, 2013).
9. ↑ 500race - Internet site: John Love. (No longer available online.) At: www.500race.org , archived from the original on May 31, 2012 ; Retrieved November 6, 2012 . 
10. ↑ ^{a b} driver rating