THE REBIRTH OF FITTIPALDI’S FAVOURITE F1 CAR
Formula 1’s youngest world champion sat trapped aboard his Lotus 72, feet pinched and ankles badly bruised. It would be 20 minutes before Emerson Fittipaldi was freed; a painful blow for his title defence, which had been ignited by successive wins in the 1973 season-opening Argentinian and Brazilian Grands Prix.
Come the Dutch race, round 10 of 15, the 26-year-old needed to bounce back after two straight retirements. He was on course to do just that, and was topping the qualifying times at Zandvoort behind the wheel of 72/5, in which he’d scored four world championship victories and a further three non-championship triumphs, making it the most successful of the 10 chassis built.
But as Fittipaldi stitched together another flier, the front-left wheel centre failed. He skated into the barrier, the wheel and suspension puncturing the car’s chassis.
As Denis Jenkinson wrote for magazine, “A look at the wreckage afterwards
