15 replies to this topic

[D28]

Hard to believe, but it is 45 years since that fateful day at Noisring Jul 11 71. I am alerted to this by a message from Motor Sport and a story of his last great drive in the 917 at Osterreichring, June 1971.

MS wrote extensively about his exploits on track and correctly rated him among the very best sportscar drivers ever. From their archives  this quote appears from the Aug 71 issue:

 

"The prowess of Rodriguez in sports-car racing was such that we referred to him in last month's Editorial and the concluding words of our Austrian 1,000 km. race report (page 806) were written before he died. It is by these deeds that this great little driver will be remembered and mourned".

W.B.

 

RIP Pedro

[Dick Dastardly]

Pedro won the very 1st F1 race I saw as a speccie.....the 1971 Good Friday International non-championship race at Oulton Park [I can't remember the actual title]...but he was gone by the British GP, my 2nd F1 experience.

I don't know anything about his relationship with Seppi Siffert but that would be an interesting [to me, anyway] retrospective.....team mates in BRM for F1 & the JW Gulf team in Sports Cars at the same time....sadly both had gone by the year's end....   

[D28]

Pedro won the very 1st F1 race I saw as a speccie.....the 1971 Good Friday International non-championship race at Oulton Park [I can't remember the actual title]...but he was gone by the British GP, my 2nd F1 experience.

I don't know anything about his relationship with Seppi Siffert but that would be an interesting [to me, anyway] retrospective.....team mates in BRM for F1 & the JW Gulf team in Sports Cars at the same time....sadly both had gone by the year's end....   

Their relationship was always very interesting, tumultuous by times but always competitive. Two of the world's very best sportscar pilots, as teamates in two different teams. MS has written about this, check out Motorsport archives. Both would be perplexed by the current F1 scene and I can't imagine either limiting himself to only 1 series at a time. I feel very fortunate to have witnessed both in action.

[raceannouncer2003]

I imagine Howden Ganley would have an interesting perspective in his new book on the relationship between Pedro Rodriguez and Seppi Siffert?

 

Vince H.

[john aston]

Pedro won the very 1st F1 race I saw as a speccie.....the 1971 Good Friday International non-championship race at Oulton Park [I can't remember the actual title]...but he was gone by the British GP, my 2nd F1 experience.

I don't know anything about his relationship with Seppi Siffert but that would be an interesting [to me, anyway] retrospective.....team mates in BRM for F1 & the JW Gulf team in Sports Cars at the same time....sadly both had gone by the year's end....   

 Me too- I was marshalling at Deer Leap and was utterly blown away by my first sight - and sound - of F1 cars .

[Alan Lewis]

Resurrecting this old thread because today, it is fifty years.

RIP Pedro.

[sstiel]

Fifty years. Blimey.  What a legacy and his brother too.  His brilliance at Brands Hatch 1970.

[RobertE]

I saw that race - even at at that young age, (15) I could see that he was doing something that couldn't be done. Amazing.

[Tim Murray]

RIP Pedro. He and Jo Siffert were two of my very favourite drivers. Hard to believe that it’s been fifty years since we lost both of them.

[404KF2]

I saw him race in 1970 at Spa in the 1000 km.  Brian Redman won!

[LodgeCorner]

This may have been seen before, but timely to watch again. Pedro winning at Oulton.

 

[chr1s]

I live not far from Bray where Pedro lived  and i always think of him if i drive through there, but i've always wondered exactly where in Bray his house was, does anyone remember? 

[john aston]

One of the blurry smudges on the video at the Deer Leap marshal's post is my 18 year old self . What a day - and how I'd forgotten what a meagre grid it actually was . 

[davidbuckden]

I too was very keen on both Pedro and Jo, especially their exploits in the BRMs and 917s.  Their approach was so emblematic of how different things were back then.  They were prepared to drive 'anything,' and, from time to time, at two different events the same weekend. Pedro's 1970 Spa win could have been a movie scenario - and a very suspenseful one at that, with Amon just being kept at bay for so long, whilst, throughout, there was high expectation that any minute the P153's V12 would fail. 

 

Like others here, I can't believe I'm half a century (!) older than I was when we witnessed the great racing that graced 1971.  Worse, it's approaching 50 years to the day since I was at Brands and saw that pall of smoke down at Pilgrim's Drop. Wanting now to mark the anniversary in a positive way, I've written a summary of Jo's 1971 racing, but so far have not found a magazine interested in publishing. Today I'm feeling that the anniversary of Pedro's death has also been and gone without the marking it should have had.

[68targa]

Pedro was a bit of an Anglophile.  I seem to remember he drove a Bentley, an S2 Continental I think, and he liked to wear a deerstalker hat as if he had just returned from a shoot or was trying to be a Sherlock Holmes ! 

 

 

Like others here it is hard to think 45 years have passed, he is sorely missed.

[JohnH]

This topic is 5 years old . Last Sunday was the 50th. July 11, 1971. Also this and last year have the same days of the week as 1970/1971 also.