Jackie Stewart’s Matra had dominated the 1969 season. With victories in South Africa, Spain, Holland, France and Britain to his name, he had turned the Formula One World Drivers’ Championship into a one-horse race. The only question to be answered was precisely when he would clinch the title. Following a rare display of fallibility when he retired at the German Grand Prix, Stewart and the circus moved to Monza. Even if he failed in Italy, there were still three more races to come but he had no intention of letting matters drag on unnecessarily. The Italian Grand Prix had a recent history of close finishes. Two years earlier John Surtees had pipped Jack Brabham by 0.2 seconds. This one would prove even tighter, with no fewer than four drivers harbouring hopes of victory going into the last corner of the last of the 68 laps.
Qualifying put Austrian Jochen Rindt on pole in a Lotus alongside the 1967 world champion Denny Hulme in a McLaren, while Stewart shared the second row with the Brabham of Briton Piers Courage. Rindt was first away, followed by Stewart, but the positions were reversed after the Lesmo Curves. With a clear road ahead of him on the second lap, Stewart spotted a tiny movement in the distance. It was a hare. Suddenly the animal darted towards the Matra. There was no chance – or indeed desire on a crowded race track – to take avoiding action and the hare smacked into one of the car’s front tyres. Stewart’s immediate concern was that a bone from the hare might cause a puncture. From then on, he closely monitored the shape of the tyre, looking for any sign of abnormality.
Before the inevitable chicane came to town, the high-speed Monza circuit was ideally tailored for slipstreaming and as the race unfolded, a gaggle of eight cars jostled for the lead – Stewart, Rindt, Hulme, Jean-Pierre Beltoise (Matra), Jo Siffert (Lotus), Bruce McLaren, Courage and Graham Hill (Lotus). Positions among this leading group chopped and changed on a regular basis but, one by one, Hulme, Siffert and Hill all fell away with mechanical trouble. Courage also slipped back, leaving the remaining quartet to fight it out. At the start of the last lap, the order was Stewart, Rindt, Beltoise, McLaren, with under half a second covering the four. Rindt snatched the lead at the sweeping right-hander, the Curva Grande, and held on through the Lesmo Curves but going into the long, final bend, the Curva Parabolica, both Stewart and Beltoise made their moves. Utilising Stewart’s slipstream, Beltoise edged out and then dived inside, seizing the lead momentarily. But he had shown his hand too soon. The Frenchman’s impetus carried him wider than he would have wished and Stewart was able to sneak up the inside with Rindt in his slipstream. Having prepared his car with a fourth-gear ratio specifically for such an eventuality, Stewart saw his decision bear fruit as he just managed to hold off Rindt on the 250 yard (229m) dash to the flag. They flashed across the line virtually side by side but Stewart had his nose in front by approximately half a length of racing car. The official distance was 0.08 seconds, at the time the closest-ever winning margin in a championship race. Beltoise was 0.09 seconds further back in third with McLaren a mere 0.02 seconds behind him. Thus the first four were covered by 0.19 seconds. It was that close.
So Stewart claimed his crown and the Italian crowd saw a tremendously exciting race. In fact the only real loser on the day was the hare.