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1 April: Today in Racing

Editor01.04.2020

There has been only one Grand Prix on April Fool's Day and that was in Brazil in 2001 when David Coulthard beat the Ferraris. Elsewhere, Frank Newton's Napier won at Brooklands in 1908, Willy Mairesse took the non-championship 1962 Brussels Grand Prix in a Ferrari and David Kennedy drove his Wolf-Cosworth to 1979 Belgian F1 Cup victory at Zolder, while Lucas di Grassi won the 2017 Formula E Mexico ePrix.

In World Rally action, Juha Kankkunen’s Lancia won the 1991 Safari Rally from Mikael Ericsson's Toyota and Jorge Recalde in another Lancia, while Carlos Sainz’ Toyota beat Kankkunen and Recalde to the ’93 Safari win. More recently in Portugal, Sébastien Loeb’s Citroën beat Subaru man Petter Solberg and Daniel Sordo’s Citroën in 2007 and in 2012, Mads Østberg led Evgeny Novikov and Petter Solberg home in a Ford 1-2-3.

April Fool's day has been good to Mario Andretti over the years — in 1967 Mario and Bruce McLaren drove a Ford Mk. 4 to set a new distance record as they won the Sebring, 17 years before he was back in victory lane when he won the Long Beach Indycar race. Other Indycar winners over the years were Helio Castroneves on 2007 and Will Power in 2012, while JJ Lehto and Jorg Muller took 2000 Charlotte ALMS honours for BMW.

Curtis Turner, Emanuel Zervakis and Rex White all won NASCAR Grand National over the years on this day, while David Pearson Dale Earnhardt, Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt, Dale Jarrett and Ryan Newman took Cup wins and in Australia. Allan Moffat took a 1984 Jamie Whincup took a 2012 win.

In other history today, Ford launched its first GT in 1963, while F1 racers Loris Kessel and Shinji Nakano celebrate their birthdays, but it was not a good day for Polish drivers. Count Eliot Zborowski the first competitor to be killed in a hillclimb, when he crashed his Mercedes at Le Turbie near Nice, France in 1903, while Polish-American NASCAR driver Alan Kulwicki (38) died in a plane crash on 1 April 1993. (Photo: Motorsport Images)

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