The third and fourth races in this year's series were fascinating demonstrations of what people like about motor racing: You never know what to expect. The turbocharged Porsche should have been a cannon on the Watkins Glen straights, but it bombed. The McLarens, bounding back from their debacle at Atlanta, absolutely ran away one-two. Two weeks later the Porsche should have been a terrific handful on the tortuous Mid-Ohio track, but it started from the pole, blew the McLarens off, lasted on dry tires through a rainstorm which had the one surviving McLaren in the pits five times to change tires, and won very convincingly. Nothing is sure about this sport.

At Watkins Glen Revson was on the pole (the only driver under the magic 100-sec lap time) but from the first turn Denny stormed ahead and went all the way to the checker. Revvie hung on as best he could and actually set the race lap record. He had some idea of passing the old man to win himself a motor race for a change, but a couple of things held him back. His brakes faded away badly – nobody seemed to understand why – and also he had an aerodynamic imbalance whenever he came close up into Hulme's turbulence.

Another super show at the Glen was put up by David Hobbs, who put in a brilliant drive in Steed's Lola and passed everyone but the pair of leaders to hold a solid third, before having to drop back from exhaustion caused by heavy steering and high cockpit temperatures. Francois Cevert took Revson's old M8F ahead to make it McLaren one-two-three. The Shadow had another terrible day, brake trouble holding Jackie Oliver down the field before finally pitching him off into the guardrail and retirement. And the Porsche? Simply put, it was a crock. Evidently the handling was down, perhaps because of tire vibration in conjunction with the lagging characteristics of the throttle response, and apparently the engine was duff. Penske had to use the unfreshened Atlanta motor for Watkins Glen too. In the race several minutes were lost with a problem in the inlet-manifold relief vents, the same thing that caused trouble at Mosport although this time it was simply a broken spring. The Porsche factory had chosen this day to fly over a bunch of European journalists to watch their Panzer crush the Kiwis. It'll be a long time before they do that again.

They should have brought them to Ohio instead. Penske took it very seriously, coming early in the week for solid testing with Mark Donohue going around on crutches to help Follmer sort things out. That it all paid off was shown by the Porsche on the pole, a tenth of a second better than Hulme, and by the first lap when Follmer pulled out fully two seconds. He went on from there, spinning twice in the later rainstorm but recovering without losing anything to score L&M's second dark-horse victory on this track. The McLarens were nowhere, Revson having his transmission fail just before the rain and probably being glad of it when he watched his teammate's struggles.

Denny finally made five pit stops to change back and forth between wet and dry tires; still he got fastest race lap right at the end and later was able to joke: "After the first stop I reckoned we might as well do some tire testing, Goodyear pays you five bucks a mile for it." The man who won himself some overdue honor was Jackie Oliver, who drove on through the rain like a demon without stopping or even spinning, was electrifyingly fast in the wet, even faster than some people with rain tires, at one stage hauled four or five seconds on a lap in on Follmer, and brought the UOP Shadow home second on the same lap with the winner. It was Oliver's first finish this year. Milt Minter was almost as fast as Oliver in the rain and even more spectacular, for he spun off twice, demolishing the speed trap the second time! But he gave Vasek Polak's 9I7-10 another good finish of third.

So in four races it was McLaren two, Porsche two, and the ups-and-downs of both marques have given no convincing idea which is the better car.

Drawing by Werner Buhrer 72

Reprinted from Road & Track November I972

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