F1 Championships: Runners-Up of the 1970s Quiz

Answer: Jacky Ickx

Jacky Ickx competed in F1 between 1966 and 1979 for a total of nine different teams. His eight F1 victories came between 1968 and 1972 and the three he won with Ferrari in 1970 was the most he managed in a single F1 season and secured him the runners-up spot in the world championship. When the Austrian driver Jochen Rindt was killed in qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix, he was leading the world championship by a margin of 20 points over Jack Brabham, with Ickx a further six points back in fourth place. So, while Ickx's late surge to win two of the last three races wasn't enough to challenge Rindt's posthumous world title, it was enough to overhaul both Brabham and McLaren's Denny Hulme to secure the runners-up position.

Ickx can arguably be described as one of the most famous Belgians in F1, having become the first Belgian driver to win an F1 race when he took victory at the French Grand Prix in 1968.

Answer: Ronnie Peterson

In 1971, the March team fielded up to four cars at some of the grands prix, most powered by the extremely successful Ford Cosworth DFV engine and others with Alfa Romeo power units. In addition, several customer teams (including one headed by Frank Williams of Williams fame) fielded customer March cars - so there were a lot of them about, mostly at the back of the grid.

The works March team fielded cars for Nanni Galli, Andrea de Adamich, Alex Soler-Roig, Mike Beuttler and Niki Lauda, but their most successful driver that year was Ronnie Peterson of Sweden.

He didn't manage to win a race, but did take four second-places and one third-place to claim the runners-up position in the world championship in only his second season in the sport.

Answer: Jackie Stewart

Scotland's Jackie Stewart claimed world championship titles in 1969, 1971 and 1973 and remained Britain's most successful F1 driver until Lewis Hamilton claimed his fourth title in 2017. However, the one thing that Stewart was unable to achieve in his career was the successful defence of a world championship; his two attempts at it (he retired after claiming his final title in 1973) ended in fifth place in 1970 and the runners-up spot in 1972. Stewart won four races in 1972, including the first and last races of the season, but he missed one grand prix due to illness and had several poor results that effectively put an end to this title challenge and instead Emerson Fittipaldi claimed his first title with the Lotus team.

Answer: Emerson Fittipaldi

Emerson Fittipaldi's world championship title defence in 1973 got off to a great start when he took six podiums in the first six races of the season, including three victories at the Argentine Grand Prix, his home race in Brazil and the Spanish Grand Prix.

However, this only equated to a slender lead in the championship over Jackie Stewart, who won the other three races. A string of poor results for Fittipaldi in the middle part of the season left Stewart with a big enough lead that he was able to secure his third and final championship with two races remaining.

The constructors' championship was closer, but the death of Stewart's Tyrrell team-mate, Francois Cevert, in qualifying for the last race in the United States saw Tyrrell withdraw from the event and handed victory to Fittipaldi's Lotus team.

Answer: Clay Regazzoni

Swiss driver Gianclaudio "Clay" Regazzoni made his F1 debut with Ferrari in 1970 and completed three seasons with them before leaving for the British BRM team in 1973 after a disappointing season the previous year. However, the BRM proved to be even less competitive and Regazzoni quickly returned to the Ferrari fold for 1974.

His decision proved to be a good one as he claimed seven podium finishes, including victory at the German Grand Prix - his first since his debut season. He went into the final race of the season equal on points with the championship leader Emerson Fittipaldi, but Regazzoni's Ferrari developed a fault with its front damper in the early part of the race and he faded down the field to finish outside the points. Fittipaldi finished fourth and took the title, leaving Regazzoni with the runners-up spot - which only became assured once Jody Scheckter's Tyrrell retired.

Answer: Emerson Fittipaldi

Ferrari won six of the 13 races held in 1975 - Niki Lauda, the eventual world champion, took five of them and his team-mate Clay Regazzoni claimed the other. The runner-up (and defending world champion), Emerson Fittipaldi, was the only driver other than Lauda to claim more than one victory during the year, with wins at the Argentine Grand Prix and the British Grand Prix. The remaining five races were shared out between Fittipaldi's McLaren team-mate, Jochen Mass; Carlos Reutemann and Carlos Pace of Brabham; Hesketh's James Hunt; and Tyrrell's Jody Scheckter. Lauda won the championship battle by 19.5 points.

The half points were awarded at the Spanish Grand Prix, which had to be stopped early when a crash caused the deaths of five spectators. Fittipaldi had refused to take part in the race due to earlier safety concerns, while other drivers had staged a strike during the practice sessions.

Answer: Niki Lauda

Niki Lauda was the world championship leader when he suffered the horrendous accident at the German Grand Prix that nearly claimed his life and inflicted severe burns to his head and face. Amazingly, Lauda missed only the next two races and returned to the cockpit of his Ferrari at the Italian Grand Prix - just 40 days after the accident.

Despite missing a chunk of the season, Lauda still held the championship lead going into the final race at the Fuji Speedway in Japan. The race took place following extremely poor weather conditions that left areas of standing water on the circuit, and Lauda took the decision to go back into the pits and retire rather than risk having an accident by continuing. Hunt managed to finish in third place and secure the four points he needed to take the title. That left Lauda as the runner-up, which was still an incredible achievement in the circumstances.

Answer: Jody Scheckter

A brand new team called Walter Wolf Racing turned up in Argentina for the first race of the 1977 season, with the experienced South African Jody Scheckter as the driver of their sole car. While the arrival of new teams was a common event in F1 in the 1970s, new teams that showed up with a competitive car and won their very first race were more rare, so Scheckter's win in Argentina was definitely a shock result.

While Scheckter was helped by the retirement of several of the cars that started ahead of him on the grid at the first race, he went on to prove that the result wasn't a fluke by taking two further victories (in Monaco and at the team's home race in Canada) and finishing the season as the runner-up in the championship. Wolf remained in the sport until the 1979 season, but were never able to replicate the success of their first foray into F1 racing.

Answer: Ronnie Peterson

F1 in the 1970s was marred by a series of tragedies. The decade started with a posthumous world champion in Jochen Rindt and 1978 saw a posthumous championship runner-up in the form of Ronnie Peterson. The Swede was 12 points behind the USA's Mario Andretti in the standings before the Italian Grand Prix. At the start of that race, his Lotus crashed into the barriers before the first chicane during a mass-accident that also took out eight other cars. Peterson suffered serious leg injuries and had to be dragged from his burning car by James Hunt, Patrick Depailler and Clay Regazzoni. While his injuries didn't initially appear to be life-threatening, he died a day later after developing an embolism.

When the race was restarted after the accident debris was cleared, Niki Lauda and John Watson completed a Brabham one-two and Andretti (who was also Peterson's team-mate) took sixth place and the championship title. As victory in the remaining races of the season was shared out between Niki Lauda, Carlos Reutemann and Gilles Villeneuve, Peterson's final points tally wasn't really challenged and the season ended with him still holding the runners-up spot.

Answer: Gilles Villeneuve

With the exception of a one-off race for McLaren in 1977, Canada's Gilles Villeneuve spent his entire career with the Ferrari team and 1979 proved to be his most successful year in the sport. He won three grands prix during the year, including both races held in the United States (one at Long Beach, California and a second at Watkins Glen, New York).

He also notched up four second-place finishes, one of which was his home race at the Circuit Īle Notre-Dame in Montreal - a course where he had taken his maiden F1 win and which was renamed in his honour after his death in 1982.

However, this impressive string of results wasn't enough to beat his team-mate Jody Scheckter in the championship. Scheckter's equal number of victories and more consistent scoring record throughout the season gave him the world title, which turned out to be Ferrari's last until Michael Schumacher won in the year 2000.