1959 USA Grand Prix
Racing data | ||
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9th of 9 races in the 1959 World Automobile Championship | ||
Surname: | II United States Grand Prix | |
Date: | December 12, 1959 | |
Place: | Sebring , USA | |
Course: | Sebring International Raceway | |
Length: | 351.12 km in 42 laps of 8.36 km
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Weather: | sunny, dry | |
Pole position | ||
Driver: | Stirling Moss | Cooper-Climax |
Time: | 3: 00.0 min | |
Fastest lap | ||
Driver: | Maurice Trintignant | Cooper-Climax |
Time: | 3: 05.0 min | |
Podium | ||
First: | Bruce McLaren | Cooper-Climax |
Second: | Maurice Trintignant | Cooper-Climax |
Third: | Tony Brooks | Ferrari |
The 1959 US Grand Prix took place on December 12, 1959 at the Sebring International Raceway near Sebring and was the ninth race of the 1959 World Cup .
Reports
background
For the first time a Grand Prix of the USA took place as part of the World Motor Show. This was already the second race of the season in the USA, after the Indianapolis 500 had already been part of the automobile world championship. In contrast to this race, however, many European teams took part in the US Grand Prix. The race was originally intended to be the season opener, but was postponed to the end of the year. This was also the only race on the Sebring International Raceway, the Grand Prix only took place as part of the supporting program for the 12-hour race in Sebring and achieved little audience response and a financial failure. For this reason, the venue for the US Grand Prix switched to the Riverside International Raceway the following year . There were three months between the Italian Grand Prix and the US Grand Prix, during which, however, two Grand Prix not counted as part of the Automobile World Championship took place. Stirling Moss won the International Gold Cup at Oulton Park on Cooper , Ron Flockhart won the Silver City Trophy at Snetterton Motor Racing Circuit on BRM ; both Grand Prix were held in Great Britain.
The constructors 'championship had already been decided in favor of Cooper, but Moss, Jack Brabham and Tony Brooks still had chances for the drivers' title. All three drivers had previously won two races each, but Brabham had the best chances thanks to more podium positions, while Brooks could not become world champion on his own. Brabham needed, including the fastest race lap and the elimination of results, a win for the drivers' title, or a second place if Moss weren't the winner. A victory was also enough for Moss to become world champion, with a second place Brabham should not have won and Brooks should not have achieved the maximum number of points of nine points. Brooks, on the other hand, should have won and set the fastest race lap, with Brabham only being allowed to finish third in this scenario. However, a Ferrari win had already become difficult at this point, as the Cooper outnumbered and proved to be dominant. Their rear engine concept has already established itself and has proven its superiority over Ferrari's front engine with several successive races. In the following season, only two front-engined cars won a Grand Prix, after which the era of these cars was finally over.
In addition to Brooks, Cliff Allison , Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips and Phil Hill drove for Ferrari . Graf Berghe von Trips returned to Ferrari after almost a season break, for Brooks it was the last race at Ferrari, he drove a private Cooper and a race for his former team Vanwall the following season . Cooper registered Brabham and Bruce McLaren for the race, both drivers stayed with the team for more years. In Lotus returned Alan Stacey back and drove next to Innes Ireland . Graham Hill had already left Lotus and was not participating in the race. His new team, BRM , also stayed away from the US Grand Prix, as they had secured third place in the constructors' championship and could not improve or worsen. One last time was Connaught reported for a Grand Prix, Bob Said drove the new Connaught Type C . Since the team was insolvent before the car was even finished, Said built the car independently, but it lacked competitiveness, which is why this one assignment remained for both the car and the driver.
Other drivers and teams took part in private cars, Moss and Maurice Trintignant in a Cooper T51 for the Rob Walker Racing Team , Harry Schell for the Ecurie Bleue . Rodger Ward , winner of the Indianapolis 500 that year, had been invited by the race organizer to report a Kurtis Kraft midget for the race. However, the car was underpowered compared to the Formula 1 racing cars and thus clearly inferior. As a result of Aston Martin's absence , Roy Salvadori drove an obsolete private Cooper T45 . Alejandro de Tomaso drove an even older model . It was the last Grand Prix for him and his OSCA team . Fritz d'Orey also drove his last race, the only time the Tec-Mec -Maseratis was used, and the American drivers George Constantine , Harry Blanchard and Phil Cade drove their only Grand Prix.
No former or reigning world champion took part in the race, this fact only occurred again at the 1994 Monaco Grand Prix .
training
The training was again dominated by Cooper. Moss and Brabham were several seconds faster than the competition from Ferrari. With a time of exactly 3 minutes, Moss reached the third pole position in a row. With a total of four pole positions, he was the most frequent driver of all drivers in the first place on the grid in the 1959 World Cup. Brabham qualified in second place, which put Moss in a position that would have been enough for the world championship title. A controversy arose over third place. Brooks was already qualified for this starting position when the organizers noticed that Schell had driven a faster lap towards the end of training and awarded him third place. However, it went unnoticed that Schell took a short cut on the route and thus skipped an entire section of the route. This gave him a time advantage of six seconds, which is why Ferrari and several other teams protested, but this was not granted. Brooks therefore started the race from fourth place ahead of Trintignant to Cooper and his team mate Graf Berghe von Trips, Allison and Hill.
Lotus qualified for the grid in positions nine and twelve, McLaren completed the top ten. The time gaps between the vehicles were very long. In the outdated Cooper, Salvadori was still eleven on the grid, but was more than six seconds slower than Moss. Said in the Connaught was thirteenth, more than 21 seconds behind, while d'Orey in the Tec-Mec was 27 seconds short of pole time. Cade in the Maserati 250F qualified for penultimate place, more than half a minute slower than Moss. The Maserati was no longer competitive and was only used in two races the following season. Ward in the Kurtis-Kraft-Midget finished last in training.
run
At the start, Brabham overtook Moss, who countered on the first lap and took the lead. A preliminary decision for the world championship was a few positions behind when Graf Berghe von Trips drove into the rear of his team-mate Brooks while braking and forced him to stop in the repair pit. Brooks' distance to the top was then two minutes after the pit turned out to be no repair. Both Brooks and Graf Berghe von Trips continued the race with working cars, only the nose on Graf Berghe von Trips' car was damaged. Another accident occurred on the first lap of the race, with Said retiring for Connaught in the last race. Moss pulled away from Brabham and extended his lead until a technical defect ended his race on lap five. Brabham took the lead from team-mate McLaren, although third place would have been enough for him to become world champion at that point. Due to clutch defects, Stacey and Schell also dropped out early, so that Schell did not take advantage of his unauthorized third place on the grid. Further technical defects forced Constantine, d'Orey and Hill to retire in the following laps.
By the halfway point of the race, Brabham and McLaren extended their lead over third-placed Allison to 30 seconds. McLaren did not attack Brabham, but kept the distance to him small in order to secure the drivers' title for Brabham in the event of any problems. Count Berghe von Trips drove behind Allison, followed by Trintignant and Brooks. Cooper and Ferrari took the first six places. With de Tomaso, Ward and Salvadori, other drivers with technical defects were eliminated and Allison also parked his Ferrari on lap 23 with a damaged clutch. Thus only seven vehicles remained in the race for the second half of the race, Trintignant improved to third in front of Graf Berghe von Trips and Brooks.
In the last laps of the race, Trintignant and Brooks kept catching up to the top. When the final lap began, Trintignant was only four seconds behind McLaren when Brabham ran out of gas half a lap before the end of the race. McLaren slowed down to give Brabham victory, but Brabham was forced to push the car to the finish. When Trintignant got close to the two leaders, McLaren changed strategy and passed Brabham to win the race himself. He took the lead for the first time in his career and won the race by less than a second over Trintignant. McLaren thus became the youngest ever Formula 1 race winner and held this record for more than 40 years. The record was only broken by Fernando Alonso at the 2003 Hungarian Grand Prix . The win secured Brabham the title of drivers, the first for an Australian racing driver and the first for Cooper, as well as the premiere driver title of a rear-engined car. Trintignant achieved the only fastest race lap of his career and secured fifth place in the drivers' championship. Trintignant was the last driver in Formula 1 history to receive a point for the fastest race lap; this point was abolished from the 1960 Automobile World Championship . Brooks still reached the podium in third place, Brabham finished fourth. Due to the rule that a driver is only scored if he pushes the car over the finish line after a failure, Brabham had to push his Cooper 800 meters up a hill in order to be scored for the points. Brooks won the runner-up in third place. Ireland finished fifth in a Lotus ahead of Graf Berghe von Trips and Blanchard in a Porsche.
In the constructors' championship, Cooper achieved the maximum 40 points due to the cancellation rules and became world constructors champion in the 1959 automobile world championship. Ferrari was runner-up ahead of BRM
Registration list
Classifications
Starting grid
Item | driver | constructor | time | Ø speed | begin |
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1 | Stirling Moss | Cooper-Climax | 3: 00.0 | 167.20 km / h | 1 |
2 | Jack Brabham | Cooper-Climax | 3: 03.0 | 164.46 km / h | 2 |
3 | Harry Schell | Cooper-Climax | 3: 05.2 | 162.51 km / h | 3 |
4th | Tony Brooks | Ferrari | 3: 05.9 | 161.89 km / h | 4th |
5 | Maurice Trintignant | Cooper-Climax | 3: 05.0 | 162.68 km / h | 5 |
6th | Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips | Ferrari | 3: 06.2 | 161.63 km / h | 6th |
7th | Cliff Allison | Ferrari | 3: 06.8 | 161.11 km / h | 7th |
8th | Phil Hill | Ferrari | 3: 07.2 | 160.77 km / h | 8th |
9 | Innes Ireland | Lotus Climax | 3: 08.2 | 159.91 km / h | 9 |
10 | Bruce McLaren | Cooper-Climax | 3: 08.6 | 159.58 km / h | 10 |
11 | Roy Salvadori | Cooper Maserati | 3: 12.0 | 156.75 km / h | 11 |
12 | Alan Stacey | Lotus Climax | 3: 13.8 | 155.29 km / h | 12 |
13 | Bob Said | Connaught-Alta | 3: 27.3 | 145.18 km / h | 13 |
14th | Alejandro de Tomaso | Cooper-OSCA | 3: 28.0 | 144.69 km / h | 14th |
15th | George Constantine | Cooper-Climax | 3: 30.6 | 142.91 km / h | 15th |
16 | Harry Blanchard | Porsche | 3: 32.7 | 141.50 km / h | 16 |
17th | Fritz d'Orey | Tec-Mec-Maserati | 3: 33.4 | 141.03 km / h | 17th |
18th | Phil Cade | Maserati | 3: 39.0 | 137.42 km / h | 18th |
19th | Rodger Ward | Kurtis-Kraft-Midget-Offenhauser | 3: 43.8 | 134.48 km / h | 19th |
run
Item | driver | constructor | Round | Stops | time | begin | Fastest lap | Failure reason |
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1 | Bruce McLaren | Cooper-Climax | 42 | 2: 12: 35.7 | 10 | |||
2 | Maurice Trintignant | Cooper-Climax | 42 | + 0.6 | 5 | 3: 05.0 | ||
3 | Tony Brooks | Ferrari | 42 | + 3: 00.9 | 4th | |||
4th | Jack Brabham | Cooper-Climax | 42 | + 4: 57.3 | 2 | |||
5 | Innes Ireland | Lotus Climax | 39 | + 3 rounds | 9 | |||
6th | Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips | Ferrari | 38 | + 4 rounds | 6th | |||
7th | Harry Blanchard | Porsche | 38 | + 4 rounds | 16 | |||
- | Cliff Allison | Ferrari | 23 | DNF | 7th | coupling | ||
- | Roy Salvadori | Cooper Maserati | 23 | DNF | 11 | Power transmission | ||
- | Rodger Ward | Kurtis-Kraft-Midget-Offenhauser | 20th | DNF | 19th | coupling | ||
- | Alejandro de Tomaso | Cooper-OSCA | 13 | DNF | 14th | Brakes | ||
- | Phil Hill | Ferrari | 8th | DNF | 8th | coupling | ||
- | Fritz d'Orey | Tec-Mec-Maserati | 6th | DNF | 17th | Oil leak | ||
- | George Constantin | Cooper-Climax | 5 | DNF | 15th | Cylinder head gasket | ||
- | Harry Schell | Cooper-Climax | 5 | DNF | 3 | coupling | ||
- | Stirling Moss | Cooper-Climax | 5 | DNF | 1 | Power transmission | ||
- | Alan Stacey | Lotus Climax | 2 | DNF | 12 | coupling | ||
- | Bob Said | Connaught-Alta | 0 | DNF | 13 | accident | ||
- | Phil Cade | Maserati | 0 | DNS | Engine failure |
World Cup stands after the race
The first five of the race got 8, 6, 4, 3, 2 points. The driver with the fastest race lap received an additional 1 point. Only the five best results from nine races counted. Only the points of the best placed driver on a team counted in the constructors' championship.
Driver ranking
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Constructors' championship
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Web links
- Results at motorsportarchiv.de
- Photos at f1-facts.com
- Grand Prix Results: United States GP, 1959 at grandprix.com
- Long Push For A Champion at sportsillustrated.cnn.com