In his second exclusive monthly blog columns for McLaren, two-time Formula 1 World Champion, Emerson Fittipaldi, said he lost the 1973 championship because Team Lotus failed to issue team orders.
“As the 1973 season wore on, I began to have a few mechanical issues and reliability problems, which I’d never had to contend with the previous year. Having scored a lot of points in the first six Grand Prix's of the 1973 season, I scored just one point in the next six. It was really frustrating – but, in spite of my recent run of bad results, as we arrived at Monza, I still had a mathematical chance of catching Tyrrell’s number-one driver Jackie Stewart for the World Championship. My teammate Ronnie Peterson didn’t.
“So we made an agreement: if I was leading the race within 15 laps of the finish, and Ronnie was running second, he wouldn’t try to overtake me; but if Ronnie was leading the race within 15 laps of the finish, and I was running second, then Colin Chapman, the Lotus boss, would hang out a pit-board to instruct Ronnie to let me pass, so as to keep my World Championship chances alive.
“Ronnie had qualified on the pole, and he took the lead early on. I’d started from fourth place on the grid, but I soon worked my way up to second place behind Ronnie. As we reached the 15-laps-to-go stage, I expected Colin to signal Ronnie to let me pass. But he didn’t. So I began to drive as hard as I could, right on the limit, and I caught up with Ronnie, and we began to race flat-out for the win.
“Ronnie was a great guy – I didn’t blame him for not letting me pass because Colin never signalled for him to do so – but in the end I finished second, less than a second behind Ronnie, with the result that Jackie, who’d finished fourth, more than 30 seconds behind Ronnie and me, was World Champion. It was ridiculous. I was so angry with Colin, and that afternoon I decided to leave Lotus at the end of the year,” Emerson Fittipaldi recalled in his McLaren blog.
“As the 1973 season wore on, I began to have a few mechanical issues and reliability problems, which I’d never had to contend with the previous year. Having scored a lot of points in the first six Grand Prix's of the 1973 season, I scored just one point in the next six. It was really frustrating – but, in spite of my recent run of bad results, as we arrived at Monza, I still had a mathematical chance of catching Tyrrell’s number-one driver Jackie Stewart for the World Championship. My teammate Ronnie Peterson didn’t.
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| Emerson Fittipaldi (Lotus) leading Jackie Stewart (Tyrrell) in Belgium, 1973. (Photo: WRi2) |
“So we made an agreement: if I was leading the race within 15 laps of the finish, and Ronnie was running second, he wouldn’t try to overtake me; but if Ronnie was leading the race within 15 laps of the finish, and I was running second, then Colin Chapman, the Lotus boss, would hang out a pit-board to instruct Ronnie to let me pass, so as to keep my World Championship chances alive.
“Ronnie had qualified on the pole, and he took the lead early on. I’d started from fourth place on the grid, but I soon worked my way up to second place behind Ronnie. As we reached the 15-laps-to-go stage, I expected Colin to signal Ronnie to let me pass. But he didn’t. So I began to drive as hard as I could, right on the limit, and I caught up with Ronnie, and we began to race flat-out for the win.
“Ronnie was a great guy – I didn’t blame him for not letting me pass because Colin never signalled for him to do so – but in the end I finished second, less than a second behind Ronnie, with the result that Jackie, who’d finished fourth, more than 30 seconds behind Ronnie and me, was World Champion. It was ridiculous. I was so angry with Colin, and that afternoon I decided to leave Lotus at the end of the year,” Emerson Fittipaldi recalled in his McLaren blog.
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| Sir Jackie Stewart and Emerson Fittipaldi in Brazil, in 2010. (Photo: WRi2) |