All credit to Surtees and Honda. It took a damned good effort to win Monza. Good car, good driving, good racecraft. But Monza '67 should have been Clark's crowning triumph. What he did was jaw-dropping.
Maybe so for Clark, but this win was indeed for Surtees and him alone. Though it was not publicly known then, there was bad blood between JS and ol' Man Potter (Enzo). Ken Miles wasn't the story of Le Mans 1966. Surtees was. The betrayal of Surtees at Ferrari was - and still is - unforgivable. Worse than anything done with P. Hill or Lauda. This event right here showed up Enzo - on his home ground even - that Enzo was capable of destroying his own team by taking Eugenio Dragoni's word over Surtees'.
I know you mean Surtees never won another WDC race. He did however win a CanAm race two months later beating the strong entries from McLaren, Penske and Chaparral (and Ferrari). The International Gold Cup at Oulton Park was a non-championship F1 race which drew a strong entry. He won that in 1970 and 1971 in cars he designed and built. I think he was amazing.
@larslarsman Actually the Brabham-Repco driven by Jack Brabham was a top car, although not as fast as the Lotus-Ford 49, it was fast enough and good enough to win both titles in 1967. Surtees actually noticed a oil slick on the track the a few laps from the end and he gambled that Brabham was unaware of it, so he positioned himself in a position in which he knew Brabham would drive over it and lose some momentum or pick another line. It did work. Surtees never won another race though.
@larslarsman What happened, like often on fast european road race, is that some driver simply ask too much of their cars going to far in the red lines. This was often worst at Monza because; well, they were no chicane at the time so "full throttle"! Plus, the Italian weather is a bit hot... So, it was really usual to see 6 to 9 cars at the finish because "everybody" broke engine, injector, transmission, oil pipe, halfshaft, fuel system, clutch, name it... It was like that until 74-75.
September 1967. The Honda (with John Surtees -1st) was not the fastest in the field. It won because the fastest cars broke down. The first few laps, the American Eagle (Dan Gurney) was out in front with no-one else in sight. I thought I was going to see a miracle. (guessing after 52 years later) After about 5 laps Dan was DNF with some kind of mechanical. The same for about the next 3 or 4 fastest cars. The Honda kept plodding along (relatively speaking) - the rest is history.
No chicanes at all in 1967. It was flat out slipstreaming almost all the way! More akin to American track racing. "9 days of Summer" is on you tube, which includes a longer section on this race, and Jim Clark's epic performance; one of the most remarkable gp drives ever!