![\"Giancarlo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-1450944024.jpg.webp\"\/)
<\/p>\nLike all the teams, Ferrari had entered 1961 faced with entirely new regulations, the F1 engine spec reduced to 1.5 litres after several years of running 2.5-litre units. There had been mutterings that the new cars would be less impressive and less dramatic than the old ones, and that the drivers would consequently be required to be less adventurous and less heroic. In other words, F1, as generations of journalists and fans have regularly predicted ever since, was apparently on the brink of becoming dreadfully dull. It is comforting to observe that some traditions never change. In 1961 Ferrari simply built a brilliant car, paired it with an excellent driver line-up, and quietly got on with winning races. At Aintree, it all came together with almost effortless authority.<\/p>\n
Von Trips was a fascinating figure, not least because he did not look or act like a race driver. Tall, aristocratic, and unfailingly courteous, he forswore his full title \u2014 Count Wolfgang Alexander Albert Eduard Maximilian Reichsgraf Berghe von Trips \u2014 and was happy for his team-mates to call him Taffy. Moreover, beneath his noble address lay an intensely committed competitor. Enzo Ferrari admired him greatly, because he was calm as well as quick.<\/p>\n
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The Ferrari 156\u2019s twin nostrils looked startlingly modern in 1961 \u2013 and still do<\/p>\n
\n Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
His victory at Aintree in 1961 was his second and last world championship-status F1 grand prix win. There is no need for me to labour over a description of the events that followed later that season at Monza<\/a>, because we all know that he met his maker in a horrible accident with Jim Clark<\/a> that Clark survived but which killed 15 spectators. Besides, this column is about Aintree, not Monza<\/a>. Nonetheless, watching old footage from the 1961 British Grand Prix today, accompanied by the mellifluous commentary of the BBC\u2019s incomparable Raymond Baxter, knowing what lay only weeks ahead, one cannot help noticing von Trips\u2019 languid body language in the Ferrari\u2019s cockpit on the grid, his easy grace, and what looked like a complete absence of foreboding. Mercifully, history does not announce itself in advance.<\/p>\n Phil Hill, by contrast, often seemed permanently engaged in conversation with his own conscience. Fiercely intelligent, and often introspective to the point of anxiety, he approached racing less as conquest than as craft. Cars fascinated him mechanically as much as they challenged him competitively. He could discuss valve timing with engineers one moment and Ernest Hemingway with journalists the next. There was an unmistakable dignity about Hill that occasionally disguised his formidable speed. He won because he understood, not because he dared. Later that year he would become the United States of America\u2019s first F1 world champion, but he would for ever wear the crown with quiet humility rather than triumphant swagger. Many years later I met him often, I enjoyed talking with him enormously, and I grew to like him a lot.<\/p>\n Von Trips during what would prove to be his last F1 victory<\/p>\n Richie Ginther completed Ferrari\u2019s magnificent clean sweep, and few drivers have been better liked in F1 pitlanes and paddocks. Californian by birth and manner, and engineer by instinct and background, Ginther possessed an extraordinary sensitivity to automotive machinery. Team managers revered his technical feedback, fellow drivers respected his straightforwardness, and journalists appreciated his lack of pretension. If others attracted bigger headlines \u2014 and they did \u2014 Ginther won something more enduring: widespread affection.<\/p>\n Behind von Trips, Hill, and Ginther unfolded a British Grand Prix narrative that was, in many ways, even more historically significant. Moss arrived at Aintree with a Rob Walker-entered Lotus 18\/21, but he was immediately sniffing around Fairman\u2019s Ferguson P99, a car that has always looked to my eyes improbably ponderous. Four-wheel-drive yet front-engined in a series that had long surrendered to rear-engined hegemony, it seemed simultaneously futuristic and anachronistic \u2014 but, when Moss drove it, he loved it. If ever there was a driver whose curiosity matched his courage, it was Stirling. He approached unusual machines with the enthusiasm of an explorer discovering unmapped territory. Think of him as a mixture of Tazio Nuvolari<\/a> and Ernest Shackleton.<\/p>\n Denis \u2018DJS\u2019 Jenkinson\u2019s 1961 British Grand Prix report<\/a> ended with the following paragraph: \u201cSo the race ran to a close, the weather clearing up well but too late, and the three red Ferraris, with their \u2018shark noses\u2019 almost scraping the ground, toured around to clean up the British Grand Prix and take the fourth Ferrari victory in a row. It had been a race full of incident, and it brought to mind the 1955 British Grand Prix, also at Aintree, where Mercedes<\/a>-Benz swept the board, but at the back of the field was a ray of hope for Britain when the Vanwall<\/a> went very fast for a short time. Two years later, in 1957, the Vanwall won the British Grand Prix, again at Aintree, and the following year Vanwall won the F1 World Championship for Manufacturers, starting Britain\u2019s supremacy in grand prix racing which Cooper<\/a> carried on during 1959 and 1960. Dare one suggest that the ray of hope this year was the Ferguson?\u201d<\/p>\n Moss samples the Ferguson P99, F1\u2019s first four-wheel-drive car and its last front-engined one<\/p>\n \n Getty Images\n <\/p>\n Jenks was wrong, for the Ferguson\u2019s ray of hope turned out to be no augury. At Aintree in 1961 it ran well enough when Fairman was racing it, and notably better and faster once Moss had replaced him after his own Lotus had expired, although it was eventually disqualified for being push-started in the pitlane. But 15 weeks later Moss raced it to victory in the non-championship F1 International Gold Cup at Oulton Park<\/a>, in the wet again, thereby recording the first and only F1 win for a four-wheel-drive car.<\/p>\n![\"Wolfgang](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-868504242.jpg.webp\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"1961](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-1181831846.jpg.webp\"\/)
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