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Wolfgang von Trips

Wolfgang von Trips retired his Ferrari 156 during the 1961 French Grand Prix with engine trouble, but won the Dutch and British rounds and was leading the championship into that fateful final race at Monza, where he lost his life in a second lap accident with Jim Clark. Photo: Chris Nixon

How will history remember Count Wolf-gang Alexander Albert Eduard Maximillian Reichsgraf Berghe von Trips? “Von Krash,” as the dim-witted sniggeringly called him? As a journeyman? Or as a true gentleman who all but won the Formula One World Championship for drivers?

The latter, I believe, would be a fair entry for the history books. OK, so he had a number of accidents, the last of which took his life. But he was no journeyman, rather a world champion in the making. When he died he was leading the F1 world drivers’ table by 33 points to Phil Hill’s 29.

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