Race Report: Nurburgring, 31 May 1975

A support race for the 1000 km Sports Car race and round 4 of the German F3 Championship, the Texaco Trophy was held over 6 laps of the full 22.835 km circuit.

Friday’s practice session was cold and miserable and most runners seemed uninterested in really going for a time, Conny Andersson went the quickest at 8:14.3, a tenth up on Freddy Kottulinsky. It nearly all went wrong for Andersson when he came up to pass a Maco at the Karussel, thinking it was being driven by the experienced Ernst Maring Andersson dived inside expecting to be given room. However it was the identical orange coloured Jaegermeister team car of the less careful Erhard Miltz who chopped Andersson denting the tub on the Swede’s March 753. Two men who came to grief were Graham Hamilton in the Ecurie Ecosse March 753 who blew an engine after half a lap and with no spare was out of the race as was Piergiovanni Tenani who removed a rear wheel on his March 743.
Saturday practice was much warmer and it was Conny Andersson who was soon setting a hot pace, lap by lap he reduced his times until he took the pole with an 8:04.7 lap that was over three seconds faster than Kottulinsky and some 10 seconds under Giorgio Francia’s lap record. Third fastest was the now quite elderly Alpine of Dieter Kern with Francia’s Maco in fourth.

Kottulinsky lead the other 33 cars away from the grid but by the end of the lap he had surrendered first place to Andersson, third was Kern from Francia, Gunnar Nordström, Ernst Maring, Renzo Zorzi, Ulf Svensson, Rudolf Dötsch, Clas Sigurdsson and Heinz Lange. Andersson set a new lap record of 8:07.1 on lap 2 but Kottulinsky wasn’t letting him get away whilst Kern was dropping away in third. Nordström pushed Francia back a place on the second lap but the Italian stayed in close contact. On lap 3 Kottulinsky came through the North Curve in the lead with Andersson in second and in some difficulties with the rear of his March. For a minute it looked as if Andersson would pull off the track but he continued but the March stopped part way round the lap with a broken damper.
By lap 4 Kottulinsky had a lead of 8.5 seconds from Kern in second who was falling further back with every lap. Nordström was eight seconds back in third with Francia another six seconds away in fourth, next there was a big dice for fifth between Maring, Dötsch, Svensson and Zorzi. Sigurdson had fallen away from this group and was having a lone race ahead of the GRD 373s of Bernhard Brack and Hakan Alriksson. Lasse Karlsson retired his old Brabham BT38 at this time with engine failure, he hadn’t qualified but had been allowed to start the race anyway.
With two laps to go Dötsch had dropped to the back of the fifth placed battle and in an effort to get back on terms he shunted Svensson up the rear at the Swallow Tail Curve. Both cars hurtled off the track, Dötsch wrote his March 753 off against the Armco whilst Svensson’s Brabham BT41 suffered rear end damage.
There were no further incidents or positional changes so at the chequered flag it was Kottulinsky who took the win by twelve seconds from Kern, Kottulinsky also setting a new lap record on the fifth lap.

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