Howden Ganley tribute PART 2 - the hard road to Formula One Instead of a place as a driver in the McLaren F1 team in 1971, Howden became a ‘works’ driver for the Yardley BRM F1 team. The first of his 41 F1 World Championship Grand Prix drives (plus a further 16 F1 non-championship races) was at Kyalami, South Africa in March 1971 in a year-old BRM P153 V12 3.0 litre car. The BRM P153 F1 cars that Howden drove for the first races F1 races of 1971 were, at best, mid-field runners , but in the newer BRM P160 V12, he was able to score a 5th place at Monza in September 1971 – where the first 5 cars to finish were within 0.62 seconds of each other. Howden also scored a fine 4th place at the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen in the last GP of the year. He was the 1971 winner of the Wolfgang von Trips Memorial Trophy for the best performance by a F1 new comer. In his only Can-Am race, Howden drove the BRM P167-01 Chev V8 Can-Am car to 3rd place at the LA Times GP held at Riverside, California – a race won by Denny Hulme in his McLaren M8F from Peter Revson, also in a M8F. Howden also drove in the Rand Daily Mail 9 Hour race at Kyalami, South Africa on 6 November 1971. With fellow drivers Mike Hailwood and Paddy Driver, Howden drove the Team Gunston Chevron B19 sports racing car and was delighted to finish in 3rd place overall, as well as being the first 2.0 litre car to take the chequered flag behind two 3-litre Ferraris. In 1972 Howden continued as a works driver in the BRM team, now with Marlboro sponsorship. The 1972 BRM P160B was not a front running car, so early GP results were modest. However, with the uprated BRM P160C he was able to pick up a good 4th place in the German GP at Nurburgring on 30 July and a 6th in the Austrian GP at Osterreichring on 13 August. He also had a one-off drive of the new BRM P180-02 V12 at Monaco on 14 May 72. As a driver for the ‘works’ Matra-Simca MS670 V12 sports racing car team, Howden completed three ‘practice’ 24 hour test sessions before racing to an excellent 2nd place in the 1972 Le Mans 24 Hour race while sharing the drive with François Cevert. When he was not otherwise involved with F1 racing, Howden also drove the BRM P167 Chevrolet sports prototype in most of the European Interserie races. He finished runner –up in the Interserie championship with some good results including wins at Nurburgring (Germany) and Zeltweg (Austria) and 5th in Finland.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 07:30:01 +0000
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