1970 Belgian Grand Prix - Amon's Luck Still as Bad

Chris Amon has to go down as one of the unluckiest Grand Prix drivers. He never won a GP in 96 starts, despite coming close on many occasions, through nothing but sheer bad luck.

For very nearly the whole of the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix, Amon followed in the wheel tracks of Pedro Rodriguez, confident that the BRM V12 would follow its usual pattern of blowing up and leave him with a commanding lead.

‘You know, I had some pretty frustrating days in motor racing, but that race at Spa must rank as one of the worst!’ Amon was to say years later. ‘Pedro hadn’t been particularly quick in practice and Jackie [Stewart], Jochen [Rindt] and I were quite a bit ahead of him. Then comes race day and he blows past us with no bother at all. The BRM V12 had us on acceleration out of the corners and was also way quicker at the top end. After three or four laps it was a straight fight between the two of us and I struggled to stay in the BRM’s slipstream, just knowing that sooner or later it had to blow up. But that day, of course, it didn’t….’

By 1970, Spa was an anachronism on the GP calendar. Fast and dangerous, Jackie Stewart had long campaigned for its removal from the calendar. He was eventually successful but in 1970, there were two drivers who were prepared to forget the dangers and revel in the exhilaration of driving round it as fast as they knew. And thank goodness they did for Formula 1 was never to return to the full Spa circuit.

1970 saw the first appearance of the March car. Amon was drafted in as team leader, but a car had also been supplied to reigning champion Stewart, to be run by Ken Tyrrell. Running the Cosworth V8, it wasn’t a particularly good car but its drivers made it perform way above its natural level.

By the end of the first lap, Amon led from Stewart and Rindt although Rodriguez was up to fourth, having started in sixth; a second-and-a-half off the pole time. By lap five Rodriguez was in the lead and Stewart and Rindt were falling back with engine problems leaving Amon as the only challenger.

‘…It was clear the BRM had a lot more power than my Cosworth…It was a real scratch to keep up. There was a lot of oil coming from the BRM and I was sure it had to blow up. I drove right at the limit, including making myself take the Masta kink flat!’

The BRM of Pedro Rodriguez

The race wore on but the pace never dropped. The two leaders were never more than 3 seconds apart and simply left the rest behind. Amon took his March to a new lap record – an average of over 245km/h (152mph) – but it still wasn’t enough. At the finish, Pedro was just over one second ahead.

The Amon luck had struck again. The BRM was not to feature in a race again in 1970 and at the one circuit which puts the most strain on a car and engine, it had held together to yet again deny Chris of his maiden GP victory. He would never again come so close.

But it wasn’t all despair.

Fabulous Michael Turner painting of the 1970 Belgian
Grand Prix

‘I flew back to England soon after the race and that night a bunch of us went out to a bistro in London. I remember sitting there and thinking how unreal it all was. Had it really been that afternoon I had run Spa at the absolute limit? That was the thing about Spa….if you were satisfied with your driving there, it gave you a high for days. No other track did that.’

Thanks to Jackie Stewart, the old Spa was erased from the calendar, perhaps rightly. But it would return, in modified form, to once again become the drivers’ favourite.