Amon’s race-long battle with Jim Clark during the 1968 Tasman race at Sandown Park is considered by many to be his finest race. The pair swapped the lead for 55 laps, with Clark just edging Amon’s Ferrari by a tenth of a second.
Photo: autopics.com.au
There was never any doubt that Chris Amon was an exceptional talent. Mauro Forghieri, Ferrari’s chief designer for almost 20 years, put him in the same sparsely populated category as the legendary Jim Clark. But even though he was in Formula One for 14 years and a works Ferrari driver for three of them, Chris never won a world championship Grand Prix. Why? Circumstances, bad luck, mechanical ills, pit mistakes, coincidence, misfortune, all of those.
From humble beginnings, Amon, who was from New Zealand’s North Island, showed promise in a 2.5-liter Cooper-Climax at Sandown Park in 1963, when he was spotted by Reg Parnell, who invited the 19-year-old to test drive a Lola-Climax F1 at Goodwood. Amon felt really at home in the car and was soon making top-six finishes in lesser events, like the Glover Trophy and Aintree 200.
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