Long Ago Lombank – The 1963 Lombank Trophy Meeting

Can you imagine the sheer agony if you were a Formula One fan and had to watch two dozen Grand Prix races of the sort we have been seeing over the last few years?

Well, back in the early 1960s, there was an F1 race virtually every other weekend. In 1963, there were exactly 24 races to the F1 rules. Fourteen of them were non-championship events, and eight of these had taken place before the first round of the World Championship at Monaco in May. Some of these non-title races were run at venues we don’t associate at all with the spectacle of modern GPs…Snetterton, Goodwood, Pau, Siracusa, Aintree, Vallelunga, Zandvoort, Reims, Solitude, Karlskoga, Pergusa, Zeltweg, and Oulton Park. Then some of the tracks hosting Grand Prix races disappeared off the calendar as well…East London, Kyalami, Mexico City, Watkins Glen. The only circuits which have an F1 race today, and did in 1963, are Silverstone, Monaco, Spa and Monza, and the nature of most of those locations has changed enormously.