Number 7 - NOT lucky for Lorenzo Bandini:

In the "Collectables..." forum I review the spectacular new book "The Brothers Rodriguez". I hope the publisher won't mind my posting my favorite passage from the book, which has nothing to do with the brothers (save for a comparison with the circumstances of Ricardo's death) but rather with one of Pedro's competitors, the unfortunate Lorenzo Bandini. Get a load of this:

"The Ferrari driver had been in his seventh year in F1; his accident occured on May 7, 1967, at 5:07 PM, or 17:07 hours. He had been 17 seconds behind Hulme with 17 laps left in the race. It had taken his rescuers 17 minutes to send him to the hospital, where he spent 70 hours in agony in room number 7. His death certificate was number 7747, and his body was taken to Milan on a Boeing 727, flight 607, and stayed 17 days in the cemetery before being buried in plot 7 of the seventh section."

Whew! With numerology like that, I guess poor Lorenzo's time was up. That Monaco race was the first F1 race I ever saw on TV, and honestly Bandini's crash is the only thing I remember from the coverage. But I guess that when one is 14, one tends to remember things like that. Having just seen "Grand Prix" for the first time, and remembering Sarti's words to Louise in the Monza pits the day before he is killed, I realized the special passion about Ferrari that made men try too hard to please the Old Man, with often tragic results. That passion is why I've followed the Scuderia ever since, and why I own a 328.....

That passage above is part of why I urge everyone who followed racing in the 60s, whether they were fan of the Rodriguez brothers or not, to get a copy of this book.

 

Remember, back then GPs were longer than they are now. Bandini crashed on the 83rd lap of a 100 lap race. Maybe because of that, the race was shortened to 80 laps a year later. I'm not sure how long Monaco is now, but I doubt if it's longer than 75 laps tops.