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[Jackmancer]

Is it a good idea to collect nice little stories from F1? I'd love to read more like these ones!

German winners
In 1961 Wolfgang von Trips had established a go-kart race track in Kerpen, Germany. The track was later leased by Rolf Schumacher, whose sons, Michael and Ralf, made their first laps there. Coincidentally, Michael's win in the 1992 Belgian Grand Prix was the first full-length Grand Prix won by a German since von Trips' last win at Aintree in 1961. At the time of his death von Trips was leading the Formula One World Championship. The belief that Wolfgang von Trips would not have been spared his fate, as a plane he was scheduled to fly in to the USA crashed over Scotland, is an urban myth. However, he seemed to be jinxed at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, where he crashed cars in the 1956 Italian Grand Prix and the 1958 Italian Grand Prix, and was injured in both events.


Gilles and Didier
Anecdote about Didier Pironi. He had a rivalry with Gilles Villeneuve, since the Imola Grand Prix of 1982. Villeneuve died the following race at Zolder - Pironi injured his legs later that season and died in a powerboat crash, in 1987.

A few weeks after Pironi's death, his girlfriend Catherine Goux gave birth to twins. She named them Didier and Gilles.

Fortune teller
Apparently, so the story goes, an old woman told Francois Cevert in 1966 that he would go on to achieve great things, but wouldn't see his 30th birthday. The story is, that Cevert's girlfriend Nanou van Melderen had been to an old clairvoyant woman seven years earlier, and the woman had predicted her meeting with Cevert.

On a second visit in 1966, the woman told Nanou, that "her loved one would be a huge success, but that his job would force them apart". Nanou told Cevert, who went to meet the clairvoyant himself - she told him the same, and also - after stopping speaking for a while - that he would not see his 30th birthday. Later Nanou confirmed that the woman also told her this, but that she had preferred not to tell Cevert about it.

Cevert's sister, Jacqueline told Adam Cooper that Cevert had laughed and said "No problem, I will be World Champion before then".



According to Cooper, Nanou first told the story in an introduction to the biography "A Contract with Death". Sister Jacqueline tells Cooper that the family had noticed a strange thing before Cevert died:
"In the last year of his life, 1973, he was always second. He had good success. One day I was with my mother and we met him in the street at Neuilly, at home. He was sad and nervous, and mother said, 'No problem, everything is good. You're always second, it's fantastic.' Francois was a little upset. 'Yes I'm second, but I won't be World Champion this year.' We were very surprised. She said, 'Ah, but it will be next year.' After he died we thought about that. It was so strange - why did he say that at this time? Did he believe the medium?"
She continues:
"My mother wanted to see this woman. She took a photograph of Francois when he was 12 years old - you could not recognize him - and this photograph to the woman, and said 'Speak to me about him.' The woman was very, very old. She put her hands on the photo, she shut her eyes, and she said, 'I see many successes, many great things, it will be fantastic, he is recognised by the whole country.' She didn't say he was a racing driver, but that he would have a great career. Then she stopped speaking. She opened her eyes. She was so surprised, and so afraid. She looked at my mother and said, 'He is dead' "

Of course I realise that lots of so-called "clairvoyants" and nothing more than good psychologists who use what people tell them and a detailed understanding of the visitor's body language to make qualified guesses as to the true story of whatever they're asked about, and probably the old woman did just that, when Cevert's mother paid a visit. But Cevert himself was quite superstitious and might actually have believed the clairvoyant - in the same article Cooper writes that just before the start of qualifying on October 6th 1973 Cevert told his mechanics the date, the fact that he was driving a Tyrrell 006 sporting number 6, and his engine was Ford Cosworth DFV number 066 - a lucky day and a golden chance to claim his first F1 pole position...

And just the finish a weird story: Cevert's mechanic, Jo Ramirez, told Cooper, that when the DFV 066 was stripped back at Cosworth, engineers were stunned when the block inexplicably fell from a bench to the ground....

Cevert was born in February 1944, so he was 29 years and some months old, when he died at Watkins Glen on October 6th, 1973.