Today in Racing: 19 April

Jackie Stewart liked the Spanish Grand Prix. He won three of them on the trot, including on 19 April 1970 when his March 701 Cosworth  won by a lap from Bruce McLaren in his own car and Mario Andretti in another March at Jarama in Madrid. That race is also remembered for BRM driver Jackie Oliver’s accident with Jacky Ickx’s Ferrari, from which fireball the Belgian remarkably emerged almost unscathed.

Sebastian Vettel set Red Bull-Renault’s first pole position before clearing off to the team’s first ever race win in a 1-2 over teammate Mark Webber and Brawn GP’s Jenson Button in the 2009 Chinese Grand Prix. Six years later, Lewis Hamilton took his 42nd pole position before dominating en route to his 36th race win over Kimi Räikkönen’s Ferrari and his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg.

In other major March 19 race news, Louis Chiron won the 1931 Monaco Grand Prix in a Bugatti T51 from Luigi Fagioli in a Maserati 26M and Achille Varzi in another Bugatti 51. After the War, it was busy in 1954 when Reg Parnell’s Ferrari 500 won the Goodwood Lavant Cup and Jean Behra steered his Gordini T16 to win the Pau Grand Prix.  

In 1958, Stirling Moss took an early rear-engined F1 win in his Cooper T45-Climax at the Aintree 200, while Tony Kotze took his front-engined Cooper-Bristol to in South African championship victory at Killarney in Cape Town. Still in South Africa, John Love won the Pietermaritzburg Coronation 100 at  Roy Hesketh in his Cooper Climax on the same day that Jim Clark steered his Lotus 25 Climax V8 to 1965 Goodwood Trophy honours.          

Crossing the pond, the action goes back to 1925 when Leon Duray’s Miller, Pete DePaolo in a Duesenberg, Pietro Bordino’s Fiat and Bob McDonough driving a Miller won a series of 25 mile sprints on Culver City’s banked board Speedway, before Harry Hartz took the 50 mile Final in another Miller.

More recently, Tony Bettenhausen’s Kuzma Offenhauser and AJ Foyt’s Watson Offenhauser won the respective 1959 and ’64 Indy Trenton 100s, while lady racer Danica Patrick scored an historic 2008 Japan 300 away race win in her Dallara Honda and Dario Franchitti Scott Dixon’s Dallara Chevrolet won in Long Beach in 2011 and ’15. Lucas Luhr and Marco Werner’s Audi R8 meanwhile won the Long Beach US sportscar race.  

There was only one World Rally Championship round on this day where Joginder Singh won the Safari in a Mitsubishi Colt Lancer, but it was busy in tin-top racing where Frank Biela’s Audi V8 quattro and Roland Asch in a Mercedes 190E shared 1992 Nurburgring DTM German Touring Car wins. Jose Maria Lopez and Yvan Muller’s Citroen C-Elysees won the 2015 Marrakech World Touring Car races, where Tom Coronel’s Chevrolet Cruze and Lopez again in a C-Elysee win in 2019.

Jim Clark won in British Touring Cars at Ford Lotus Cortina Goodwood in 1965, while Tom Walkinshaw’s Ford Capri took Thruxton 76 honours and Volkswagen Passat CC drivers Jason Plato and Colin Turkington shared 2015 Donington Park honours with Matt Neal’s Honda Civic. Down under meantime, Norm Beechey won the 1970 Sandown Australian Touring Car race, while Mark Skaife, Craig Lowndes and Russell Ingall shared 1998  Phillip Island wins and Garth Tander and Jamie Whincup won the Hamilton 400 in 2008 and ’09 respectively,

NASCAR winners on this day include Lee Petty in 1953, Fireball Roberts in ’57, Ned Jarrett ’62 and Fred Lorenzen ’64 Grand Nationals, while Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth each won Cup races in 2011 and 2015 on the same day that occasional South African F1 driver Basil van Rooyen, sportscar racer Alain Cudini and Indycar star Al Unser Jr. all share birthdays. (Photo: Red Bull)