Apart from these successes, Amon's racing career seemed once again to have stalled. Apparently a chance meeting with Mo Nunn of Ensign Racing led to the Ensign drive, but in fact Mo Nunn thought his new N175 a very fast car and did not view the two Dutch drivers favoured by the Dutch HB Security company who sponsored Ensign fast enough. Gijs van Lennep, the 1973 European F5000 Champion in a Surtees TS11 who had won Le Mans in 1971 and 1976 was a very good driver but also one of the last racing aristocrats. Van Lennep, qualified the car on its debut in the French GP at Paul Ricard and finished 6th in the German GP at Nürburgring, and was faster on both circuits than Patrick Nève or Amon were in 1976. Amon managed 7th in the non-championship Swiss GP at Dijon chasing James Hunt debuting the disappointing Hesketh 308C and 12th in two GP drives in the Ensign N175 at the Austrian and Italian GPs. At Monza after a long pit stop he finally ran at competitive pace, running 4 laps down but keeping pace with the leading Ferrari 312T of Niki Lauda for a number of laps. Progressive evaluation of the possibilities of what was slowing the N175 led Amon to change the airbox alignment on the day of the Italian GP and this resulted in a 2-second gain (much like the change in air cooler position that lost and gained two seconds on Hunt's McLaren M23 resolved by the 1976 French GP). Ironically Amon never raced the N175 again and the high airboxes had been banned by the time N176 ran at Jarama the following year, but the flash of testing and driving genius was enough to give Amon another chance. Although the results were unremarkable, he and Nunn worked well together, so Amon joined Ensign for the 1976 F1 season.