When Swiss champions could still do the math!
08/25/2011
During his 20-year career as a motorcycle and automobile racer from 1947 to 1967, Glarus entrepreneur Harry Zweifel took part in 283 races. 31 absolute track records, 43 best times of the day, 75 category and 128 class victories! Despite this extraordinary number of victories and records, Harry Zweifel counted only four races among his greatest successes. One of them was his title as Swiss racing car champion in 1960. But let's let Harry Zweifel tell the story himself:
"Everyone was lining up against me to finally show the Glarner who was the champion. Not only did I have to keep an eye on the people in the racing car class, the sports car drivers could also spoil my soup. The regulations at the time also penalized racing cars that were beaten by faster or even weaker racing or sports cars with the same displacement. If the road was dry for the sports cars and raining for the formula cars, the risk of collecting penalty points was particularly high."
Zweifels' biggest opponent in 1960 was Walter Habegger in a Lotus Cosworth. The starting position at the last race on Marchairuz was as follows: Habegger already had three valid maximum scores - so-called "hundreds" - while Zweifel only had two. He therefore had to win the race cars to draw level with Habegger. In the event of a tie on points, successes abroad would have contributed to winning the title and Habegger was unable to offer anything on a par. To increase the tension, the otherwise reliable Ferrari engine began to ail. This increased the risk of being punished by Heini Walter in the 1.5-liter Porsche Spider. To prevent this, his mechanic Sepp Zuber - motorcycle Klaus winner in 1932 on Condor - fitted the smaller-displacement 1.5-liter Climax engine to the Cooper chassis.
This meant that only the racing car drivers Charles Vögele and Walter Habegger posed a threat. After the first race, Zweifel was significantly slower than Vögele in the Lola and therefore on the brink of defeat. Habegger was on the verge of becoming the heir apparent and sports car driver Heini Walter set a fabulous best time. But then Zweifel gritted his teeth in the second run and improved his time by 2.3 seconds. Vögele and Habegger were no longer able to catch up; they were even a few tenths slower.
After this "slide rule race", Harry Zweifel became racing car champion for the fourth time in a row and the readers of Automobil Revue voted him "Switzerland's most popular car racer".
The picture shows Harry Zweifel from Glarus at the Mitholz-Kandersteg hill climb in 1960 in his Cooper-Ferrari (Cooper chassis with Ferrari engine).
Note: In addition to good material, driving skills and courage, the racing drivers of the time also had to know their way around a slide rule in order to outwit the "bonus-malus system" of regulations devised by automotive bureaucrats!
