Five Cars, One Hundredth of a Second: The Race That Defied Belief

There has never been a race like the 1971 Italian Grand Prix, and there almost certainly never will be again. The Monza circuit in that era was run without chicanes — a pure high-speed blast around banked curves and long straights, the cars touching 200 miles per hour on the back straight, the drivers sheltering behind each other in a drafting train that meant the lead changed hands dozens of times per lap. For all 55 laps, a group of five cars were inseparable.

Peter Gethin, Ronnie Peterson, François Cevert, Mike Hailwood and Howden Ganley traded positions with a frequency and intimacy that produced, lap after lap, one of the most extraordinary spectacles in motorsport history. The slipstreaming was almost theatrical: a car would tuck behind another, wait for the right moment on a straight, swing out and pass, only to be repassed before the next corner. Nobody could build a gap. Nobody could break free. The race became a question of who would be perfectly placed at exactly the right moment.

Gethin, driving the BRM P160, made the decisive move on the final straight. He emerged from the slipstream at precisely the right point, timed his run with perfect precision, and crossed the finish line first. The gap to Ronnie Peterson in the second-placed March was 0.01 seconds — one hundredth of a second — after 55 laps and approximately one hour and eighteen minutes of racing. François Cevert was a further 0.09 seconds behind in third. The first five cars were covered by 0.61 seconds.

The average race speed was 150.755 miles per hour — a figure that stood as the fastest in Formula 1 history for over three decades. It will likely never be beaten because the Monza that produced it no longer exists. The chicanes installed in subsequent years slowed the circuit dramatically, eliminating the conditions that made the 1971 result possible.

Peter Gethin won for BRM, his only Formula 1 victory. Ronnie Peterson was 0.01 seconds behind in second, François Cevert third for Tyrrell, Mike Hailwood fourth and Howden Ganley fifth — all within 0.61 seconds of the winner after over an hour of racing. The result represents, statistically, the most compressed finish the World Championship has ever produced.

Jackie Stewart, who had already clinched the 1971 championship, did not finish the race. His absence from the slipstreaming train paradoxically made the final result more open — the man who had dominated the season took nothing from Monza.

Jackie Stewart had already secured the 1971 World Championship before Monza, driving the Tyrrell 003 with a combination of pace and clinical consistency that left the opposition without answer across the season. The Italian Grand Prix was therefore a race without title stakes, which perhaps liberated the drivers who remained in contention for position and allowed the extraordinary slipstreaming battle to develop without strategic conservatism.

Gethin's win was his sole Formula 1 victory. He remains the answer to one of the sport's best trivia questions: who won the closest race in history? His BRM, uncompetitive by the standards of the season's leaders, was perfectly suited to the conditions that particular afternoon at Monza — fast on the straights, stable through the banking, and in the hands of a driver who timed his final run to perfection.

September 1971 found the world in a period of significant transition. The United States had ended its formal dollar-gold standard in August — the Nixon Shock — fundamentally altering the international monetary system that had underpinned the post-war economy. The Vietnam War continued; the Pentagon Papers had been published in June, exposing the gap between official statements and classified government assessments of the conflict.

At Monza, the politics of the outside world were distant from the parkland circuit that sat just north of Milan. The tifosi — the Italian fans whose passion for Ferrari and for motorsport in general had no equivalent elsewhere in Europe — packed the trackside in the tens of thousands. Ferrari's absence from the front of the race was noted with disappointment. The result was instead delivered by a Briton in a BRM on a day when the circuit, the conditions and the shape of the race all aligned to produce something unrepeatable.

Hot and sunny, classic Italian September. Temperatures around 27°C, the track surface well-rubbed-in and fast. No wind of consequence to disturb the drafting trains that the drivers assembled on the long straights. The conditions were perfect for the kind of slipstreaming race that Monza without chicanes produced almost every year — but 1971's version surpassed them all.