The 100 Most Remembered GPs of All Time: Germany 1968

The German Grand Prix of the 1968 world championship was held as usual on the legendary Nürburgring circuit. Already legendary at the time, the eighth round of the world championship would be held on this track, the one hundred and sixty-ninth Formula 1 race, which would later be remembered as one of the most beautiful races ever held.

The first drivers arrived on the track on Thursday afternoon and found the circuit dry, with fair weather, and had the opportunity to do a few laps of the track with technicians and tire specialists to test the terrain on which they will race the following day.

The first free practice session on Friday saw some drivers take to the track despite the dense fog that had descended on the track. Others, like Jackie Stewart, decided not to risk damaging the car by going out onto the track and tackling the entire lap with such low visibility: in fact, it seemed that the marshals on the track couldn't even see the position adjacent to their own. The drivers thus waited for the second daily practice session to better test their cars. In the afternoon, however, the weather conditions worsened further, so the day's results remained fixed at the morning's times.

Almost everyone, both drivers and teams, at this point complained about the few kilometers covered during testing, and managed to get approval for an extraordinary free practice session early on Saturday morning. That was a good opportunity to test some new aerodynamic components, even if the feedback from the track was barely recognizable given that it was a circuit over 20 kilometers long.

Once the tests were over, there was finally a list of the starting grid which saw Jacky Ickx in first position, with a time just 4 seconds over nine minutes, followed by Chris Amon, Jochen Rindt, Garham Hill, Vic Elford and Jackie Stewart. The grid was laid out following an order of 3:2:3, unusually, as in previous editions, the starting grid in Germany had always been 4:3:4.

During testing on Sunday morning, many cars took to the track to become familiar with the track, but the weather conditions were truly terrible: rain and fog had made the Nürburgring track a real trap for the drivers. Real torrents of water crossed the runway coming out of the woods around the track, and the precarious visibility prevented the pilots from identifying them. The cars were, therefore, in constant danger of aqua planning. Jackie Stewart himself decided not to risk ruining his car in the morning, and after having made a long slide on the track, but without ruining any mechanical components, he immediately returned to the pits.

At the start of the race, which was postponed by 45 minutes, some cars among the leaders had engine overheating problems already on the grid. Among these were Siffert, Surtees and Hill. At the start of the race the poleman's start was decidedly poor: Ickx caused the rear wheels to spin too much and slipped behind other cars. Among these was Stewart's Matra, which almost ended up off the track in an attempt to overtake him, but in the end he managed to regain control and arrive at the first corner in third position, behind Gaham Hill, the race leader and Chris Amon. Halfway through the lap, fighting against spray that made driving impossible, Stewart passed Amon exactly at a point where Jack Olivier had been the victim of an accident earlier in the morning. The Scotsman managed to pass Hill before the long straight with a skilful drive, so as not to have spray that limited his visibility. At this point Jackie began to push, unaware of the gap between himself and the second, and in less than two laps he managed to gain a full 34 seconds on Hill.

Lap after lap he accumulated more and more of an advantage, even with some small shivers. In fact, with three laps to go, the Scottish driver turned into an S at too high a speed, and his car slipped on the track, headed towards an inspector positioned in the open without any protection. The tragedy seemed inevitable when the Matra miraculously regained its lost grip and narrowly remained on the track and continued its race. At the same point, a few minutes later Garham Hill was involved in an accident with the exact same dynamics, but the commissioner had seen fit to move to a more sheltered place. Hill managed to get out of the car and brought it back onto the track, still remaining ahead of Rindt.

At the end of the race Jackie Stewart crossed the finish line in 2h 19m 03.2s, leading Garham Hill and Jochen Rindt by four and a half minutes. Stewart's victory is still considered one of the greatest victories in all of Formula 1 and the driver himself has always been of the same opinion. The Scot's way of driving in the fog and on such an irregular and especially wet and slippery asphalt was extraordinary. In all this it must be considered that Stewart was competing for the occasion with a wrist injury suffered during the previous grand prix. In short, it was in all respects the masterpiece of Jackie Stewart's career.

“Even after winning a race like that I can hardly say that I thought the race would be run over the entire length. Every time I crossed the finish line I was sure that I would see the checkered flag waving, because honestly the track was not in a condition to be driven by our cars. In fact, I believe that we drivers deserved great praise, as, throughout the race, none of us went off the track so violently as to be injured."

Matteo Bramati.

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