When non-championship races gave F1's B-list a chance to shine

In addition to Pau and Goodwood, the 15 other non-championship F1 races that bulked out the 1950 F1 season were staged at Goodwood again, Gamston, Gamston again, and Silverstone (all in England), Douglas (Isle of Man), Dundrod (Northern Ireland), Saint Helier (Jersey), Pescara, Bari, and Ospedaletti (all in Italy), Montlhéry and Albi (both in France), Pedralbes (Spain), Geneva (Switzerland), and Zandvoort (Netherlands). Fangio won at Ospedaletti, in an Alfa Romeo this time, narrowly beating Villoresi (Ferrari) again, just as he had at Pau, and he won in Geneva and Pescara, too, also in an Alfa both times; and Parnell won the second Goodwood race, just as he had the first, albeit now in a BRM rather than a Maserati. Giuseppe Farina, who would become 1950 F1 world champion for Alfa Romeo later that year, won at Bari and Silverstone, while Louis Rosier (Talbot-Lago) won at Albi and Zandvoort.

But some non-championship F1 races were poorly supported by the works F1 teams and their top-line drivers, which means that the descendants of B-list or even C-list racers such as Peter Whitehead, who won at Saint Helier and Dundrod in 1950, David Hampshire (Gamston), Cuth Harrison (Gamston also), Bob Gerard (Douglas), and Georges Grignard (Montlhéry) are all able to state with pride that their fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, or great-great-grandfathers won F1 races.

Whitehead was a B-lister, perhaps even a B+-lister; it would be very churlish to classify him as a C-lister. A wealthy privateer, he had been quick before World War II, having shipped his ERA Type-B to Australia, where he won the 1938 Australian Grand Prix at Bathurst and the 1938 Australian Hillclimb Championship. During WW2 he served as a pilot in the Royal Air Force, and in the 1950s he won a number of important sports car races including the 1951 Le Mans 24 Hours, with Peter Walker, in a works C-Type Jaguar. In September 1958 he and his younger brother Graham were sharing Tour de France Automobile driving duties in a Mk1 Jag when Graham, the lesser driver of the two, lost control on a bridge near Lasalle, causing their car to roll twice then plunge into a deep ravine. Graham, who was shaken and stirred, and had been injured seriously but not critically, managed to clamber out. But Peter had been killed instantly. I have often wondered how poor Graham managed to cope with the grief and the guilt.

An F1 win is an F1 win, but Hampshire’s non-championship F1 victory at Gamston in 1950 cannot be regarded as a classic, for only three other drivers took part. Even less august, Harrison’s non-championship F1 win at Gamston in 1950 was the result of his being the only finisher among the four drivers who had started the race. Gerard’s non-championship F1 win at Douglas in 1950 was a proper race – the British Empire Trophy, no less – for 15 drivers were entered for it and, of the seven who were still running after the 220 miles (354km), he was the winner by a minute and a half. Grignard’s non-championship F1 win at Montlhéry in 1950 deserves respect, too, for it was something of a marathon. Eleven drivers were entered for the 309-mile (497km) race but only three were still running at the end, Grignard four laps to the good.

As far as world championship-status F1 grands prix are concerned, the heroes of my past few paragraphs are mere footnotes, it must be said. Grignard started only one pukka F1 grand prix, and failed to finish it; Gerard raced in six, scoring three sixth places; Harrison drove in three, finishing one of them; and Hampshire did just two, recording a ninth place and a DNF. Only Whitehead had anything approaching a notable F1 career, starting 10 F1 grands prix and finishing third in his very first, at Reims, in 1950, in a Ferrari 125. But are they F1 winners? Yes! All of them!

Two of the unluckiest drivers in F1 history are Chris Amon and Jean Behra, brilliant virtuosos who nonetheless never won world championship-status F1 grands prix despite looking like doing so on a number of occasions. But they are both F1 winners, thanks to their participation in non-championship F1 races. Amon stood on 11 pukka F1 grand prix podiums, albeit never from the central plinth, but he won two non-championship F1 races: the 1970 two-heat International Trophy at Silverstone, in a works March 701, from the pole, driving fastest lap, beating Jackie Stewart’s Tyrrell-run March 701, which amounted to a jolly good show; and the 1971 Argentine Grand Prix at the Autódromo de Buenos Aires Oscar y Juan Gálvez, driving his screaming V12-engined Matra MS120 to a fine victory, again over two heats.

Behra stood on nine pukka F1 grand prix podiums in the 1950s, albeit never from the central plinth, but can you guess how many non-championship F1 races he won in the same decade? The answer is 12 – at Pau (three times), Aix-les-Bains, Reims, Cadours, Bordeaux, Caen, Silverstone, Aintree, Modena, and Ain-Diab.

The true greats – drivers who won world championship-status F1 grands prix prolifically – also racked up non-championship F1 wins like they were going out of fashion, which I guess they were, or would eventually. Jim Clark won 25 F1 grands prix and 19 non-championship F1 races; Juan Manuel Fangio won 24 F1 grands prix and eight non-championship F1 races; Stirling Moss won 16 F1 grands prix and 19 non-championship F1 races; Jack Brabham won 14 F1 grands prix and 16 non-championship F1 races; all the top guys were busy non-championship bees back then.

The mainstays of the non-championship F1 scene were the International Gold Cup at Oulton Park, the International Trophy at Silverstone, and the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, which is where we came in, for its 60-year anniversary is almost upon us. The Oulton Park International Gold Cup was won five times by Moss, four times by Brabham, thrice by John Surtees, twice by Clark, but also twice by Roy Salvadori, who never won a world championship-status F1 grand prix. The Silverstone International Trophy was won by a glittering ensemble of F1 world champions – Ascari, Farina, Mike Hawthorn, Brabham, Graham Hill, Clark, Stewart, Denny Hulme, Emerson Fittipaldi, Niki Lauda, James Hunt, and Keke Rosberg – while the Brands Hatch Race of Champions was won by Stewart, Fittipaldi, Hunt, and Rosberg, among other fine F1 drivers.

Rosberg’s 1983 Race of Champions victory, which he delivered on an unseasonably warm April afternoon over the undulating swoops and swerves of the UK’s greatest circuit, Brands Hatch, came at the end of a short (40 laps) race in which only 13 cars had been entered. But what cars! And what drivers! Rosberg won in a Williams FW08C, dancing that nimble little roller-skate of a car on the throttle to compensate for rear tyre wear that for less naturally gifted drivers might have been seriously debilitating; second, just 0.49sec behind Keke, nursing a dicky tummy caused by too much beer and curry the night before, was Danny Sullivan in a Tyrrell 011; third was Alan Jones in an Arrows A6; the DNFs included René Arnoux in a Ferrari 126 C2B, John Watson in a McLaren MP4/1C, Nigel Mansell in a Lotus 93T, and Hector Rebaque in a Brabham BT52, one of the most beautiful F1 cars ever made. I was 20, and at the time I was working in a factory operated by Unigate Dairies in Scrubs Lane, Willesden, north-west London, which closed long ago. I had been rostered to work overtime that Sunday, and I had asked permission to swap shifts with a workmate so that I could go to Brands Hatch instead. Permission had not been granted. I was absolutely gutted, and, even now, 42 years later, looking at photographs or TV footage from that race fills me with atavistic, wistful, dewy-eyed melancholy.

It was the last non-championship F1 race. Will there ever be another one? Probably not, no, but wouldn’t it be lovely if there were?