PAGE 8

AUTOWEEK .AUGUST 21, "1976

AustrianGPA Big Win
For Watson/Penske Equtpe
By Pete Lyons
OESTERREICHRING, Austria-John
Watson's back was to the wall ofPenske's
rented motor home. His fingers were
nervously rubbing his clipped beard.
Penske's eyes bored straight into his.
"You bet I'm hO,lding you to it. It comes off
tonight." Hard man, Roger Penske.
They were both trying to keep from
laughing like Their faces kept
twitching into little incredulous smiles.
Ringed about with waving notebooks and
jostling tape recorders, Watson's soft
Ulster voice kept saying, "It was too easy,
actually. I don't really believe it. I'm not
going to believe it until I read it in the
'comics.' '' He'd just won the Austrian
Grand Prix, his first GP and the first for
Penske Racing and the first for Geoff
Ferris' PC4 and the first for First National
City Bank. He'd won it fair and square on
pure speed. It had turned out to be a
beautiful day.
The matter of the kind of day it was
comes into it inevitably, because to start
out with . the Groesser Preis von
Oesterreich 1976 looked like turning into
one large, example of
everything that can possibly go wrong
with motor racing. Niki Lauda's accident
and the withdrawal of Ferrari took much
of the Juster out of it, and naturally made
the race organizers fearful about their
"gate." Behind the scenes was rather a lot
of unseemly bickering about whose fault
it all was and who should pay for it. Then
the weather turned dull; memories of last
year's very soggy race -coupled with
intermittent heavy rain all during
practice to keep the Austrian-and
Italian and Yugoslav-public firmly at
home. The wet grassy hillsides held large
open spaces between the scattered tents
. and clumps of wet, huddled spectators.
As the grid of 25 cars lined up, the sky
was dark overhead, the track was damp
underfoot, and the fresh mountain wind
was bringing down little spots of fresh
rain.
It was the sort of day that you'd really
like to cancel.
To an extent, some of Watson's victory
was won the week before. Together with
. McLaren and bolus and one or two other
teams, Penske had spent a couple of days
testing at the Oesterreichring. Hunt was
quickest then, not surprisingly, at about
1m 34.5-but Watson was only a tenth off
that with the PC4. Both were therfore
quicker than Lauda's 1975 pole position
time of 35.85.
"It's going well here, just like it does at
Silverstone, it seems to like smooth, fast
circuits, " remarked Watson. "We're
getting it pretty good," said Penske,
"partly because we're not changing it
around all the time, we're just staying
with it." ;
The two days of testing turned out to be
particularly worth while-and testing is
almost as expensive as actual racing-
when the official practice degenerated
into hour after hour of pouring rain. Only
the first 11/2 hours, on Friday morning,
was anything like dry, and almost the
entire grid was established then. It rained -
in the afternoon of that day and only nine
drivers bothered to go out at all. Saturday
'morning's weather was reasonable, but of
course (1976 rules) it didn't count for grid
positions. Saturday afternoon it rained
again.
Therefore those who had already tuned
the car to the track were in comparatively
good shape. Hunt took pole at 1m 35.02,
139.155mph, with Watson 0.82 behind in
second place. Ronnie Peterson, whose
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All alone in front: John Watson on the way.
Ch flS Mulien Photos
Two who finished and one who didn't: Ronnie Peterson (10), Jody Scheckter (3), and winner John Watson.
team had not tested, was third a further
half second back. It was the normal sort of
preliminary grouping you get in a first
practice session. It ,wound up being the
rather abnormal grid. - -
It seemed thin without Lauda, colorless
without Ferrari, and when it seemed
. damp as well at 2pm on it hardly
seemed worth going on with.
The race was held back half an hour in
all while everybody tried to outguess
weather. Although it was actually
spotting with rain and the track surface
was damp, there was enough blue sky
around the rain clouds that everybody
finally decided to gamble on starting on
slicks.
Hunt-driving the regular M23, not the
new M26 which had been tested but wasn't
as fast yet-had chosen to start on the
outside of the front row. For once he made
a first class start, but he was paced the
whole way by Watson, and the two were
still side by side as they tore up the hill
into the lpng, flat-out right-hand bend at
the top-. The next four men were all side by
side, four abreast. All this with a thin but
. distinct haze of water from the shiny
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tires. Hey-maybe this is going to turn
out to be a race after all!
Watson won the first turn dice, and
Peterson came through too, so the two
Citibank cars lead the Marlboro one along
the long top straight and down through
the loops and twists to the bottom again.
Nilsson's JPS was right tight up with
them, making it first four nose to tail.
Then the next group came along in a
similar but bigger cluster, Pryce leading
Laffite, Pace, Scheckter, Andretti, Mass
and the other two Marches of Brambilla
and' Stuck. The gray raincloud was still
dripping rain, and it was distinctly wet so
the cars were all fishtailing. But nobody
was babking off at all, and you could see
the two days of frustration of 25 highly
strung racing drivers being taken out
now.
Halfway . around the second lap
Brambilla lost it coming ou t of the second
left-hander at the "Texaco corner;" he
merely did half a spin and stopped
sideways across the road, but before he
could do anything abou t it Depailler came
along and couldn't manage to cut inside.
The six-wheeler Tyrrel chopped off the
Continued On Next Page
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