1968 Deutschland Trophäe
| Race details | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st race in the 1968 European Formula Two season | |||
| Date | 7 April 1968 | ||
| Official name | II Deutschland Trophäe Martini Gold Cup |
||
| Location | Hockenheimring | ||
| Course | Permanent racing facility | ||
| Course length | 6.786 km (4.217 mi) | ||
| Distance | 2 x 20 laps, 270.71 km (168.21 mi) | ||
| Weather | Wet | ||
| Pole position | |||
| Driver | Matra | ||
| Time | 1:59.3 | ||
| Fastest lap | |||
| Driver |
 Henri Pescarolo
|
Matra | |
| Time | 2:00.1 | ||
| Podium | |||
| First | Matra | ||
| Second | Matra | ||
| Third | Williams | ||
The 1968 Deutschland Trophäe, also known as the Martini Gold Cup, was a motor race, run to Formula Two rules, held on 7 April 1968 at the Hockenheimring, Germany. The race was run over two heats of 20 laps of the circuit, and was the first round of the 1968 European Formula Two season. During the first heat, British driver and double Formula One World Champion Jim Clark suffered a fatal accident.
Clark had also been asked to race at Brands Hatch by Ford, who wanted him to drive their new sports car, but Clark had already agreed to race for his Team Lotus boss, Colin Chapman at Hockenheim.
It had rained before the first heat, rendering visibility very poor. Max Mosley, later President of the FIA, was driving his Brabham in the race. He described the difficult racing conditions: "The first corner was thick spray. I was thinking, 'this isn’t a good idea'. All you could do was steer by looking at the tops of the trees, because you couldn’t see where the track went."
The first incident was when Walter Habegger crashed his Lotus 41 into an earth bank on lap four. On lap five, on a gentle curve just after the first corner, Clark was running eighth when he spun off the track into the dense trees lining the circuit, and he died almost instantly. A flag marshal's eye-witness report stated that the car had lost grip at the rear and Clark had tried to correct the slides a number of times before hitting the trees. Amid the many conflicting rumours concerning why the car left the track, Clark's mechanic, Dave Sims, blamed a right rear tyre deflation for the accident, and the official accident investigation report concurred, concluding that the most likely explanation was that the right rear tyre had explosively deflated after picking up a slow puncture. Colin Chapman, who was not present at Hockenheim that day, suggested that Clark may have picked up debris from an accident during the previous day's practice session, in which Habegger had also crashed.
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