1976 Swedish Grand Prix

Anderstorp, Sweden, June 13th

Although the manipulators behind the scenes of Formula One racing have managed to bring about a degree of uniformity to most things, almost to the point of dullness, they have yet to remove all the variety from the circuits on which the Grand Prix races are held. After the seemingly unreal atmosphere of racing round the streets of Monte Carlo, the scene moved to the totally flat and featureless geometric Scandinavian Raceway at Anderstorp in the backwoods of Sweden. You would be hard put to design a less enthralling circuit than Anderstorp, like having to fit as much Scalex track into your front room as possible. Yet, in spite of this, the atmosphere is pleasant and relaxed, everything seems spacious and enjoyable and afterwards most people say “That wasn’t a bad little Grand Prix, was it?”

At least the cars get on full song, and hold it there, on the long back straight, which is also the Flying Club’s runway, in contrast to Monte Carlo where the power is “on-off-on” all the time. The constant radius, slightly-banked corners go on for as much as 180-degrees at times and can cause some embarrassingly high G-forces to be generated. As the circuit is without any visible gradient and seems to be very smooth, it would appear that a suspension set-up almost like a Go-Kart, with no suspension at all, would work well, but somehow the reverse seems to apply. Confusion as to the real requirements for Anderstorp continues to reign and there wouldn’t be much fun for the people in Formula One racing if all the requirements were known for all the circuits. While some teams confuse themselves by trying to be scientific and logical about their approach, others take pot-luck, or adapt a “hit-and-miss” experimental attitude and when it is all done it is up to the driver anyway.