Two months after giving the Porsche 936 its first victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans alongside Gijs van Lennep, Jacky Ickx headed to Mosport for the North American round of the 1976 World Sportscar Championship. This time, the Belgian faced a very different kind of opposition.
The 1976 Player’s 200 had one particularity. The Group 6 prototypes competing in the World Championship were joined by a number of Group 7 cars, cars that had made their name in Can-Am.
Nine Group 7 cars took part in practice, with eight eventually starting the race. Among them were a McLaren M20-Chevrolet for George Follmer and a Shadow DN4-Chevrolet for Jackie Oliver.
Oliver knew the DN4 well. In 1974, the Briton had won four of the five Can-Am rounds at the wheel of one, securing the title in the process ahead of his team-mate… George Follmer. Can-Am then went on hiatus for 1975 and 1976 before returning in a different form the following year.
At Mosport, Oliver was back in a car that held a special place in his career. Still black, but now carrying Valvoline colours, this DN4 was powered by a naturally aspirated 8.1-litre Chevrolet V8 producing around 800bhp.
The Briton took pole position with a 1m15.320s lap. Follmer put his McLaren M20 alongside him on the front row with a 1m16.038s. Behind them, Ickx’s Porsche 936 was 1.161s off the benchmark, with Patrick Depailler’s Alpine-Renault A442 just 0.089s further back.
The following day, Oliver won after leading all 80 laps and setting the fastest lap of the race. Yet after 316.590 kilometres and just under one hour and 46 minutes of racing, only 7.958s separated him from Follmer.
Ickx crossed the line third, 46.175s behind the winner, ahead of Depailler’s Alpine, one lap down, and Vern Schuppan’s Mirage GR8-Ford, three laps behind.
Two months after winning at Le Mans, the Porsche 936 had therefore been beaten by two cars from a championship that no longer even existed. At least in the overall classification. Oliver and Follmer’s Group 7 cars were, of course, ineligible to score World Championship points.
Third across the line but first among the Group 6 runners, Ickx therefore left Mosport with the points for victory, his third such success of the season after Monza and Imola. He would do it again at Dijon two weeks later. Two years after his Can-Am title, Jackie Oliver gave the DN4 one final victory at the highest level.