Season 41 – 1955 Grand Prix – Round 4 – Works - Bremgarten

The fourth race race in the 1955 Grand Prix series takes us to Bremgarten in Switzerland. Bremgarten is situated to the north of Bern and was built as a motor cycle track in 1931. The circuit itself had no true straight, instead being a collection of high-speed corners. From the outset, it’s tree-lined roads, often poor light conditions and changes in road surface made for what was acknowledged to be a very dangerous circuit, especially in the wet.

The Swiss Grand Prix was held at Bremgarten between 1934 and 1939 and again between 1947 and 1954. In 1950 the Swiss Grand Prix was included in the new Formula One World Championship. The race was won by Italian Nino Farina, who would go on to be the first Formula One world champion. In 1951 Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio dominated in his Alfa after taking advantage of Farina's wrong decision not to make a pit stop to change tyres during changing wet-to-dry conditions. In 1952 newcomer Stirling Moss ran as high as third in his underfunded Alta-powered HWM, but the race was won by Italian Piero Taruffi who scored his first and only F1 victory. In fact this Grand Prix was only championship race (other than the Indianapolis 500) not won that year by Alberto Ascari. In 1953 Ascari had to make a pit stop to fix the misfiring engine in his Ferrari. He left the pits in fourth place and stormed round the circuit, passing Fangio in a Maserati, and his teammates Farina and Mike Hawthorn to take victory. Ascari also won his second Drivers' Championship at that event. In 1954 Fangio (now driving a Mercedes) led from start to finish in rainy weather to take his second Drivers' Championship from countryman José Froilán González. Bremgarten has not hosted an official motorsports event since 1955, when spectator racing sports were banned in Switzerland.

Race list	=	iGOR
Server	=	UKGPL05_60fps
IP address	=	146.198.65.66:32666
Password	=	see above
GPL Mod	=	55
60fps Patch	=	60fpsV2newmod
Track download	=	Link
Track directory	=	bremgart
Qualifying starts	=	20:45 UK time - 45 minutes
Race starts	=	~ 21:30 UK time
Race length	=	18 laps
Replay	=	here

Please restrict chat to emergency messages only including at the end of the race until ALL drivers still racing have crossed the line.

Driver lists and division specific rules can be found on the championship standings page.

Available Tokens:
Note: These are the tokens available to each driver before the 10 tokens are added for making the race start.

Driver	Tokens	Status
bagrupp	10	Works
Claudio Navonne	18	Works
Clive Loynes	18	Works
Doni Yourth	10	Works
Enrique Farina	18	Works
EvilClive	12	Works
fpolicardi	9	Works
GrandPrixYannick	12	Works
JonnyO	30	Works
Leo Menegucci	6	Works
Pete Bennett	2	Works
Phil Thornton	0	Works
Victor Torino	6	Works

Dear me, Jonny.  You've got to get that addressed ASAP, amigo.  No fun in any situation.

I put down a reasonable lap in qualifying with the promise of more to come to start P9 and got the jump on Pete's slow-starting Gordini to move up a place by T1.  I was mindful of the hazards of this venue and was being ever careful.  Quite shocked to see that Lap02, we had three fallers.  First, Leo exiting the Quarry immediately followed by Ricky pruning off a wheel entering Eichholz and late in the lap, Jonny doing likewise in the esses approaching Forsthaus.  I thought that at this rate, I'll be leading in another lap or two.

Settled in with Fulvio just up the road chasing hard after Phil and Clive.  Yannick was edging away to a solid lead.  I was having a clean race with only one very minor brush of the barriers in Tenni and managed to close a bit on Fulvio.  Drama on Lap14 as I came across Phil broadside in the roadway at Quarry after he had a wild ride through T1.  Bad luck there, PT.

I was still pretty close to Fulvio til I had a small slip exiting the Forsthaus hairpin to start the long run down pit straight.  A little too much throttle with wheelspin.  This let Fulvio pull away somewhat and from there on in, he started to put in laps that I just couldn't quite match.  A bungled run into Forsthaus a lap later cost a lot of time and my spirits sank.  From there on in, I just concentrated on trying to get it home in one piece with a decent P4 result.

Bravo on the victory, Yannick!  Super jobs by both Clive and Fulvio for the podium. 

Firstly, sorry about the tight grid; I thought I had it set properly but obviously not. Thankfully that didn't cause any problems and we all got away safely, great driving by everyone. I managed to avoid the crashes on lap 2 which was quite lucky. On this track the wreckage tends to stay on the tarmac. I settled in and had a great battle with Clive for a few laps until I lost concentration and made a daft mistake at T1. I managed to keep out of Doni's way as I recovered but another contact with the scenery damaged the engine and I was then down on power. I decided to try to carry on and get to 50% distance, which I managed to do, before the engine finally expired and I coasted to a halt. Impressive speed from Yannick and congratulations to the finishers.