French Grand Prix

Clermont-Ferrand, 5 Jul 1970

All cars are 3-litre F1 unless noted.

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 Jul 1970 pp8-15 (report by Patrick McNally). Motor Sport August 1970 pp838-841 (report by DSJ). Motoring News 9 Jul 1970 race report on pp12-14 (by MGD) and 'Paddock Potterings' on pp14-15 (also by MGD). Sport Auto Aout 1970 pp30-36, including 'Les Voitures en Course' (by Gérard Crombac). Motor 11 Jul 1970 pp54-67 (by Philip Turner). Autocar 9 Jul 1970 pp2-5 9 (report uncredited). The Motor Racing Year No 2 p70-78 (by Anthony Pritchard). Motor Sport provided chassis number information in both the Practice Times table and on the grid, including the non-qualifiers. Sport Auto only identified cars in the 'Les Voitures en Course' section, but was still giving a lot of detail about tyres. Autosport was the most structured, and was still providing engine numbers.

The factory teams included as usual two Brabham BT33s, two Lotus 72s plus a 49C for Soler-Roig, three works McLarens, two Matra MS120s, two Tyrrell March 701s plus a spare, two works March 701s plus a spare, three BRM P153s, and two Ferraris plus a spare, although Autosport did not note the spare Ferrari. So that's 19 works entries with 22 cars. The four privateers at this race were the Walker Lotus 49C for Graham Hill, Pete Lovely's 49B, Colin Crabbe's March 701 for Peterson and Silvio Moser with the Bellasi. John Surtees did not attend due to more engine problems, and Mario Andretti's Granatelli March 701 was in the US.

Peter Gethin's accident at Zandvoort in Hulme's usual M14A/2 required some reshuffling for this race, the M14D having its Alfa Romeo replaced with a DFV for Hulme to drive, and De Adamich finding himself back in the heavier M7D. Sport Auto said that the M14D-DFV was given the number "M14A/3" and Autocar said it was carrying two chassis numbers, "M14A/3" and "M14D/1". Nine cars were given guaranteed starts with the other 14 having to fight for the other 11 places. As Hill was one of the nine, Moser, Soler-Roig and Lovely never looked likely to make the grid.

The big news in the paddock was that Dunlop had announced its much-leaked intention to withdraw from F1 and F2. There was a bit of a fuss before the start as Ickx' space car had gone unnoticed, but when a cracked valve was found on 003, the car he had used through practice, Ickx tried out 001 in the warming up session. He decided 001 was not set up, and as the engine in 003 was running well, he swapped back to 003. Some teams only noticed the swap back from 001 to 003 and there were mutterings of cheating. Ferrari were forced to admit - in effect - that they had been planning to cheat but now were not! Gerard Crombac, of Sport Auto had been paying particular attention and could vouch for 003 being the car Ickx had used to set his qualifying time so he was not forced to start from the back of the grid.