DO IT YOURSELF
Chris Amon/Pedro Rodriguez with V12 Ferrari 312P
It’s a chilly, windswept, Saturday 12 April in 1969 and the location is the paddock at Brands Hatch. One of the potential winners of the next day’s BOAC 500kms World Sportscar Championship race chugs slowly up the hill towards the exit in order to get to the pits and track for the final qualifying session. Usually this would be a job undertaken by the mechanics but here the fabulous factory V12 Ferrari 312P is being driven slowly by works driver Chris Amon and in the ‘passenger seat’ is his team mate, the late, great, Mexican, Pedro Rodriguez, wearing his trademark deerstalker.
The pair were to annex second fastest time to put the car in the middle of the front row. In those days the grids were formed up 3-2-3 and on pole was one of three works Porsche 908/3 cars shared by the late Jo Siffert and Brian Redman, whilst on the outside of the front row was the Team Filipinetti Lola T70 Mk 3B GT of the late Jo Bonnier and Herbie Muller. Sadly this car destroyed itself in the race, cartwheeling several times along Bottom Straight with Bonnier at the wheel. Luckily he survived that one.
The 312P may have been quick in practice but the race went to the Porsches, who finished 1-2-3, leaving the Ferrari in fourth. It was not necessarily one of the quickest prototypes from Maranello, but it was certainly one of the best looking.
