A championship won on reliability
The 1967 Formula One season ran to eleven races, beginning in South Africa on January 2 and ending in Mexico in October. The drivers’ title went to Denny Hulme of New Zealand, driving for the Brabham team, who finished on 51 points. His team leader Jack Brabham was second on 48, and Jim Clark of Lotus was third on 41. Brabham also took the constructors’ title.
The notable feature of the season is that the champion was not the driver who won the most races. Clark won four grands prix; Hulme won two. Hulme’s advantage was that his car kept running and finished high in the points far more often than the faster cars around it.
Brabham and Repco
The Brabham cars used Repco V8 engines, built by an Australian company. They were not the most powerful engines on the grid, but they were considered robust and simple. Jack Brabham, who had won his own third title in 1966, ran the team as both driver and constructor, and he and Hulme were in effect rivals inside the same garage for most of the year.
Hulme, nicknamed “the Bear” for his build and manner, took his first grand prix win at Monaco in May, and later won the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. Brabham won in France and Canada. The Brabham pair collected points steadily while Lotus lost races to mechanical problems, and the title fight stayed open until the final rounds.
The Lotus 49 arrives
The year’s technical story was the Lotus 49, designed by Colin Chapman’s team with the new Ford-financed Cosworth DFV engine. It made its debut at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort in early June, and Graham Hill put it on pole in qualifying. Clark won the race on its first outing, an unusually strong start for a new car.
The DFV engine was important beyond that single season. It was later sold to other teams and became a dominant power unit in Formula One for years, but in 1967 the early cars were still fragile. Hill, Clark’s team-mate, suffered several retirements, and Clark himself lost points to breakdowns in the first half of the season. He then won in Britain at Silverstone, in the United States at Watkins Glen, and in Mexico, and the four wins show how close he came to taking the title.
Safety concerns at Monaco
Motor racing was dangerous in the 1960s, and the 1967 season carried a reminder. At the Monaco Grand Prix on May 7, Lorenzo Bandini of Ferrari crashed near the harbour chicane while chasing the leaders. His car overturned and caught fire, and he was badly burned. He died a few days later.
The accident drew attention to the lack of fire protection, the use of straw bales as barriers on street circuits, and the slow arrival of marshals and medical help. Drivers such as Jackie Stewart, who had survived a serious crash at Spa in 1966, were increasingly vocal about the need for safer circuits and equipment, though change was gradual. Fireproof overalls, better fuel systems and barriers were still being developed in the years that followed, and fatal accidents continued in the sport.
Clark’s own death came in April 1968 at a Formula Two race at Hockenheim, a loss that had a powerful effect on the sport’s drivers; it is mentioned here only as context, since it falls outside 1967.
How the season was decided
The title came down to the late rounds. By the time of the Canadian Grand Prix, which Brabham won, the two Brabham drivers were both well placed in the standings. Clark’s win in Mexico closed some of the gap, but Hulme’s earlier points were enough to put him ahead of both Brabham and Clark in the final table.
Seen from the point of view of the grid, the year was a contest between a quick but unreliable Lotus and a slower, more dependable Brabham. The result was one reason why engineers and team owners treated reliability as seriously as speed in the seasons that followed.
Context
The calendar in 1967 was quite different from a modern one. Eleven races, in Europe, South Africa, North America and Mexico, were spread over most of the year, with long gaps between them. Drivers also competed in sports car racing, Formula Two and other events, which is one reason that “Le Mans 24 Hours” and the Indianapolis 500 appear in the same sporting calendar, and that many leading figures raced in several series in the same season. Cars were also much lighter and used narrow tyres, and wings and aerodynamic aids had not yet appeared.