Eagle Mk1 - Race History

Race History

The Eagle Mk1 made its race debut at the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix, with a single car entered for Dan Gurney. The Eagle made an instant visual impact, with its gracefully crafted chassis clothed in dark blue paint, with a white-lipped radiator opening and a single white stripe running the length of the car's dorsal surface; an elegant interpretation of the USA national racing colours. Unfortunately for the team the car, despite its good looks, failed to finish. For the introduction of the new V12 engine at the 1966 Italian Grand Prix, Gurney took the wheel of the new car, and was joined by compatriot Phil Hill in the older Eagle-Climax. Once again it was an inauspicious start, with Hill failing to qualify, and Gurney retiring during the race. Gurney did score points during the season, at both the French and Mexican events, but on both occasions this was with the Climax-powered car.

For the 1967 Formula One season the Climax-engined chassis 101 was sold to Canadian driver Al Pease, and all AAR chassis ran as Eagle-Weslake machines. The season proved to be intensely frustrating for all concerned. Although Gurney and sometime team-mate Bruce McLaren managed to qualify the Eagle-Weslake cars in the front two rows of the grid on no fewer than eleven occasions from the season's eleven Grands Prix, only two cars finished a race. That both of these finishes were in podium positions highlights the raw speed of the Eagle Mk1. AAR's first major race win came in the 1967 Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, with Gurney taking the aluminium-chassis 102 to victory in this prestigious non-Championship season opener. 104 was introduced at Zandvoort, Holland, early in 1967; the lightest and fastest of the Eagle Mk1 vehicles, it was with this car that Gurney scored the team's only Championship victory: the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix.

By 1968, and despite increasing success in their native series, Anglo American Racers were starting to run short of funds. Development of the Eagle Mk1 was halted as the team ploughed what little funding it had into the design of its successor, the projected Mk6. Nevertheless, Gurney persisted with the older car for the first half of the 1968 season, but was only rewarded with a handful of retirements and one single, ninth-placed finish. With the obviously unreliable car also, thanks to its intricate V12 engine, being one of the more expensive cars on the grid to maintain, AAR bought a McLaren M7A. Ironically it was with the McLaren, built by his previous year's AAR team-mate, that Gurney scored the team's only points of the season. At the end of the season AAR closed the doors on their foray into Grand Prix racing, to concentrate their efforts on USAC racing.

The last appearance of an Eagle Mk1 in a Formula One race was when Pease privately entered 101 for the 1969 Canadian Grand Prix. Pease and the Eagle-Climax car suffered the ignominy of being the only car in the history of Formula 1 to be black-flagged and disqualified in the middle of a race for simply being too slow. The basic Mk1/Mk2 chassis design continued to be used in American National Championship races into the early 1970s. In common with most cars of the time, experimental wings and other aerodynamic aids - including the eponymous Gurney flap - were added to Terry's lithe chassis lines over the years, reducing the cars' visual impact and obscuring car's most noteworthy single design feature, the vestigial eagle's-beak nose.