VIDEO: Clark, Hill, Lotus 49 Romp at Watkins Glen USGP 1967

by VM Staff

Over this Long Beach GP weekend, which for so many year featured Formula 1, and as we prep for the 2021 United States Grand Prix at Circuit of The Americas, Oct. 22-24, it’s in keeping with the enthusiastic mood to look back 54 years at another USGP on the other end of the country.

This 5 min YouTube video is an extract from the 1967 Ford film ‘Nine Days in Summer’ charting the development and racing performance that year of the stunning new 3-liter Ford-Cosworth V8-powered Lotus 49s.

Says the film-clip descriptor, “The Lotus 49s saw perhaps their greatest success in this, the penultimate race of the 1967 Grand Prix season, held at Watkins Glen in New York. Jim Clark won the race despite a compromised suspension, with Graham Hill second even though he had suffered gearbox trouble.”

A now infinitely safer ARMCO-barried-lined racetrack, Watkins Glen has lost its original sweeping beauty. There was nothing quite like the upstate New York fall greenery surrounding this fast-flowing circuit, as this tasteful video reminds.