German Grand Prix

Nürburgring, 4 Aug 1968

All cars are 3-litre F1 unless noted.

Notes on the cars:

1. Lola T102 [F268/1] (Hubert Hahne): New for Hubert Hahne to race in BMW's F2 team in 1968, first appearing in the German Grand Prix in August, where it used a 2-litre version of the BMW Apfelbeck radial valve engine. Then raced by Hahne in F2 at two races in October 1968, and retained as his F2 in early 1969. Sold in 1970 to Robs Lamplough, who had it fitted with a Mathwall-built Ford Boss 302 engine for Formula 5000, renaming it the 'Lampola'. Retained by Lamplough for many years, until sold in 2018 to Ben Mitchell, who is restoring it to its 1968 Formula 2 specification.

Sources

Note that the identification of individual cars in these results is based on the material presented elsewhere in this site and may in some cases contradict the organisers' published results.

3-litre Formula 1 World Championship events 1966-1985

These 1966 to 1985 results were initially compiled by Allen Brown, but these were in the very basic form required to track individual car histories. Since then further details, such as laps completed, qualifying times and so on, have been added from Rob Ryder's extensive database.

All comments, clarifications, corrections and additions are most welcome. Please email Allen at allen@oldracingcars.com if you can help with our research.

Individual sources for this event

Autosport 9 Aug 1968 pp8-15. Motor Sport September 1968 pp816-818,820. Motoring News 8 Aug 1968 pp1,10-12. Speedworld International 10 Aug 1968 pp10-23.

Ferrari had a new chassis 0015, and 0007 was left at the factory. McLaren had M7A/2 as a spare, which Autosport said could be distinguished by an extra row of rivets down the side, and Hulme raced this instead of his intended M7A/3. Brabham now had three BT26s, but also brought the old BT24 for Kurt Ahrens to drive. Each Matra team had two cars for one driver, as usual. All four extant V12 BRMs were present, with 126-02 as the spare. The two Coopers and singleton Eagle were unchanged except for wider wheels and a new engine for the Eagle, and the usual Honda RA301 had a new engine, RA301 E803. The Lola T100 had a 2.1-litre engine. The only privateers were the Walker/Durlacher Lotus 49B and the Moser Brabham BT20.

The Lotuses still had high rear wings and front side wings, the Brabhams a more modest height rear wing and front canards, a pattern newly followed by Honda, both Matra teams had joined McLaren and Eagle with an aerofoil over the engine, Eagle were doing their own thing with an aerofoil behind the engine and a bib slung under the nose, Cooper went the whole hog with a high rear wing and Lotus-style front wings, and poor old BRM went the other way and dispensed with all aerodynamic aids on the two Owen Racing Organisation cars but tried a huge aerofoil over the engine of the Parnell car. Only Lotus and Honda were feeding this downforce directly onto the rear suspension. The key difference in all of these was the Matra system, which was moveable. On Beltoise' car the wing angle was changed by an electric motor triggered by gear changes, but towards the end of practice Stewart's was fitted with a wing controlled by the brake pedal. The Scot had already been very fast during wet practice and said he could not feel any difference with the wing. However, he stuck with it for the race and won by a massive four minutes. Whether that was the Scot's natural abilities or the moveable wing is open to debate. Only Denis Jenkinson in his ‘Continental Notes' column (September 1968 p791) discussed Stewart's brake-activated wing; all the weeklies' reports largely overlooked it. Patrick McNally for Autosport (16 Aug 1968 p9) caught up a week later in his ‘On The Scene' column, having the benefit of Johnny Rives' articles in L'Equipe, the French sports daily newspaper. Rives had discovered that the electric motors used by Matra came from their intercontinental ballistic missile programme.