Date 16 September 1962 | Course length 5.750 km (3.573 mi) | |
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Course Permanent racing facility Distance 86 laps, 494.500 km (307.268 mi) | ||
The 1962 Italian Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held at Monza on 16 September 1962. It was the seventh race of the 1962 Formula One season. The 86-lap race was won by BRM driver Graham Hill after he started from second position. His teammate Richie Ginther finished second and Cooper driver Bruce McLaren came in third.
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Race report
Jim Clark started on pole position, but the Lotus team still looked worried as the team had gone through all of their gearboxes over the weekend. Two crates of spare parts were flown down, but nonetheless Clark and Trevor Taylor started with no more spares available. After only two laps Clark pitted with the expected transmission trouble; he made it back onto the track for another ten laps but that was it. Teammate Taylor managed 25 laps before his race ended. Hill kept stretching his lead out and finished nearly a half minute before Richie Ginther in the other BRM. Ginther had been duelling with Surtees throughout the race, but on lap 38 Surtees slowed down and five laps later he retired with engine troubles. Behind these two, there was a race long three-way fight between Dan Gurney's Porsche and the Coopers of McLaren and Maggs. The cars swapped positions constantly, coming down the straight on the fiftieth lap three abreast. Maggs had to stop for more fuel, unlike McLaren whose car had been fitted with 170-litre (45 US gal) fuel tanks to enable him to run the entire distance. Meanwhile, Willy Mairesse in the new non-sharknose Ferrari 156 had caught up to the third-place contenders and brought Jo Bonnier and Giancarlo Baghetti with him.
Gurney's car was pressed to hard and he retired on the 66th lap with a broken rear differential. After this, the positions stabilized a bit, although not until after Baghetti had briefly led the pack to the appreciation of local fans. Bonnier's clutch began slipping and Baghetti also fell back. Mairesse took third on the eightieth lap, and built up a three-second lead over McLaren. Stirling Moss, who was watching from the speaker tower, began betting people that McLaren would take third and he was right: in the first curve of the last lap, McLaren passed Mairesse and he took third by only 0.4 seconds. Bonnier's clutch troubles allowed Baghetti to pass him for fifth place near the end of the race. Phil Hill had to suffer being lapped before half of the race was over, and had to make a long pit stop with engine troubles and finished twelfth. RodrÃguez' Ferrari lost oil pressure, Innes Ireland had a good race until something snapped in the steering, and Masten Gregory's car was overheating and then only ran in fourth gear for the last laps. The fire extinguisher in Roy Salvadori's Bowmaker-Yeoman Lola exploded in his face during practice.