30th May 1965: The Day The Championship Looked West

The thirtieth of May has appeared on the Formula One World Championship calendar more times than almost any other date — and it has never produced a quiet afternoon.In this episode of Chequered Past, we follow four stories across seven decades. In Monaco in 1965, Graham Hill took to the escape road on lap twenty-five and came back to win his third consecutive Grand Prix at the principality, while Jim Clark was making history at Indianapolis the following day. For eleven years between 1950 and 1960, the Indianapolis 500 sat inside the World Championship as an official round — a strange arrangement that produced Vukovich and Ruttman and Hanks and Pat O’Connor, and ended quietly in 1960 with no Formula One driver present. In Monaco in 1976, Niki Lauda won from pole for his fifth victory of the season and extended a championship lead that looked unassailable — though none of us watching could have known what was coming at the Nürburgring ten weeks later. And in Istanbul in 2010, Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel collided while running first and second for Red Bull, handed McLaren a 1-2, and planted the seed of a bitterness that would take years to fully bloom.Send us Fan MailMusic by #Mubert Music Rendering