What a fabulous set of drivers existed in GP racing, back then - Stirling Moss, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, John Surtees, Innes Ireland, Jo Bonnier, Phil Hill, Richie Ginther, Wolfgang Von Trips, Maurice Trintignant, Tony Brooks, Jack Brabham, Masten Gregory, Dan Gurney - what a star-studded cast! Every one a legend!
Does anyone else wish that the coverage was as civilised these days? I would also like to pay tribute to the Men who drove these beautiful but dangerous (as a road car of the time ) at speeds we could only dream about. Thank you for posting
I was 11 years old in 1961 and these are the drivers and cars that made me a fan of F1. I remember reading race commentary in Road & Track and the articles by Henry Manny. (As always, "Practice was the usual shambles".) I also remember that these were extremely dangerous times and often the drivers I followed didn't finish the season. Maybe it was because I was a kid, or maybe because it seemed to be the nature of the sport, but it all seemed to flow from weekend to weekend, season to season
This was Phil Hill's only victory in his career, yet he won the Drivers Championship. Unreal isn't it? I wish they'd shone more of the old course, the real Spa-Francoramps circuit.
Actually P. Hill won the Italian GP in the same year, and event that his teammate was killed in. Hill also won the 1960 Italian GP in a Ferrari, however it was a front-engine contraption that only he and Stirling Moss share that distinction of having won GPS in front-engine & rear-engine cars with regards to the history of GP racing. However that’s not what is remarkable about P. Hill. What is remarkable about Hill is that he managed to win a WDC under the dysfunctional organization known as Ferrari. Ferrari back then was anything but pleasant to be associated with, much less driving for them while ‘Old Man Potter’ was alive - who had a bad habit of his arrogance override the realities of racing; you can make good cars to win, but you need to have good drivers to do so. Unfortunately for Enzo, he never realized this until after the 1982 Imola Crisis - which ended up entombing his own team into disaster until after he died. Great racing enthusiast & manufacturer, but lousy at team management. Though he deserved some slack because the poor b@stard was caught in a Italian civil war between his wife and his goddammit mother. RIP Enzo ✝️🌿🌎🌤 One of many men tortured by women’s BS.
Go to the football games, if you like balls so much. Men loving balls, I don't want to hear it. You English speakers bringing up those testicles all the fucking time, please stop that strange hobbit. Or habit. What is it...
I dont care how old this comment is. How fucking dare you insult people who race in motorsport today just because they dont go out to race with a large chance of dying. Even now racers still die. You are a cancer on this earth
To be honest I prefer this track to Nordschleife, because I really love extremely fast tracks and corners, plus the powerful slipstream created entertaining racing. :)
Anyone read Michael Cannell's =The Limit= yet? Covers the '61 season in depth with extensive background on Hill, Taffy and Il Commendatore, as well as most of the Ferrari GP drivers of the '50s and early '60s. A =terrific= (if bloody) read. (No. I am not MC or even remotely associated with the publisher. But I =was= around in '61 to see it as it happened.)
Just finished the book this past week. Good read, although most of the book covers the years leading up to 1961, as opposed to the actual season itself. Provides a good background to the careers of Hill and von Trips leading up to the climax at Monza '61.
"The Limit" is excellent. Great narrative; conveys 1950's western U.S. and European social atmosphere--at least as experienced by top-level racing drivers. Check out "The Cruel Sport" by Robert Daley. Insightful writing and photos, primarily of early 1.5 litre F1. Drivers, cars, circuits profiled, along with racing's classy/psychotic/romantic appeal...and violent early death's likely triumph. Classic.
In 1961 it was the first year I took a serious interest in F 1 but I first became interested in F 1 when Fangio was kidnapped in Cuba in 1958. What a shock when the driver I was most interested in, Von Trips was killed.
Indeed. "A tiny pebble had lodged in Hill's eye on the twentieth lap. He drove the last third of the race half blind. ... Once again Tavoni held out a sign freezing positions..."
didnt happen nothing it isnt good to see boring time at f1. the pilots afraid of death everyone was happy when he was still alive after race. nothing action and brave overtake
