French Grand Prix

Dijon-Prenois, 7 Jul 1974

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 11 Jul 1974 pp20-29 (by Pete Lyons). Motoring News 11 Jul 1974 pp9-13 (by 'AH' Alan Henry). Motor Sport August 1974 pp815-817 (by 'DSJ' Denis Jenkinson). Autocar 13 Jul 1974 pp28-30 (by Andrew Shanks). Sport Auto Aout 1974 pp54-61 (by Gérard Crombac). Autocourse 1974/75 (edited by Mike Kettlewell) reproduced Pete Lyons' reports from Autosport, so included very little information that had not already been published. Autocar was back to a normal report length.

The F1 Association entries totalled 22, headed by two-cars teams from Lotus, Tyrrell, McLaren, Brabham, March, Ferrari, BRM, Shadow, Surtees and Williams, plus the Yardley-McLaren and the third BRM. Also entered was the Ensign, the Hesketh, and the two Embassy-Hill Lolas, plus Hexagon Racing who had a second Brabham BT42 for this race so Surtees refugee Pace could join Watson, Leo Kinnunen's Surtees, and a Scuderia Finotto Brabham for Gerard Larrousse, making 30 entries. The Ensign's and Kinnunen's entries had initially been declined after the F1 Association insisted only 28 entries should be allowed, but they both turned up regardless following an announcement by the CSI in mid-June that all entries must be accepted. After a show of strength between the CSI and the F1 Association, Bernie Ecclestone backed down for once, apologised to Ensign boss Mo Nunn and allowed the Ensign to run on the second day of practice. Only 22 cars would be allowed to start, leaving a massive eight DNQs. When practice was over this included four F1 Association members: the second cars from Brabham, March, Surtees and Williams. Also out were the Ensign,the second Hexagon Brabham, the Finotto Brabham and the hapless Kinnunen. Dislodging the F1 Association cars were Hunt's Hesketh, Watson's Hexagon Brabham, and both Lolas. Pryce had joined Shadow and his third place on the grid was a revelation.

One outstanding mystery here is the newly rebuilt Surtees TS16 raced by Mass. It was identified by Autosport as TS16-02 and said to be the car Pace crashed at Monaco. Jenkinson agreed, saying Surtees "had completely rebuilt TS16-02", but Motoring News said it was brand new and "should rightly be titled" TS16-06. The problem with this story is that "TS16-02" had been present for Pace in Sweden, after the Monaco accident, according to all the most reliable sources. Either the rebuild happened before Sweden and the journalists were late to the story, which seems unlikely given its visually different "Mk 3" form, or Pace's car in Sweden was actually TS16-03. A careful study of photographs may solve this one day…