| Wolfgang von Trips | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Birth Name: | Wolfgang Alexander Albert Eduard Maximilian Reichsgraf Berghe von Trips | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Birth Date: | 4 May 1928 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Birth Place: | Cologne, Rhineland, Prussia, Germany | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Death Place: | Monza, Italy | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Death Cause: | Injuries sustained at the 1961 Italian Grand Prix | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Wolfgang Alexander Albert Eduard Maximilian Reichsgraf Berghe von Trips (pronounced as /de/; 4 May 1928 – 10 September 1961), also known as Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips, was a German racing driver, who competed in Formula One from to . Nicknamed "Taffy", von Trips was posthumously runner-up in the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in with Ferrari, and won two Grands Prix across six seasons.
Born in Cologne and raised in Kerpen, von Trips was born into a noble Rhineland family as an aristocrat and count of the Free State of Prussia. After struggling with agriculture, von Trips moved into motor racing. He made his Formula One debut at the 1956 Italian Grand Prix with Ferrari, failing to qualify. Von Trips made further appearances for Ferrari in at the Argentine, Monaco and Italian Grands Prix, scoring his maiden podium at the latter. He made regular appearances with the team in, taking another podium at the . Von Trips made two appearances for Porsche in before returning to Ferrari at the season-ending, with whom he scored regular points finishes throughout his campaign, finishing seventh in the championship.
Whilst leading the 1961 World Drivers' Championship, having taken his maiden victories at the Dutch and British Grands Prix, von Trips died as a result of an accident during the at Monza. After a collision with Jim Clark, von Trips lost control of his Ferrari 156, fatally wounding himself and 15 spectators as his car went airborne. Ferrari withdrew from the remaining —having already won the World Constructors' Championship—with teammate Phil Hill taking the title by one point to von Trips.
The son of a noble Rhineland family,[1] von Trips was born in Cologne, in the Rhine Province, which at the time was part of the Free State of Prussia during the years of the Weimar Republic. He was an aristocrat and count.[2] Regarding personal names, Graf is a German title, translated as Count, not a first or middle name; the feminine form is Gräfin. Von Trips grew up in a Romantic-moated castle in Horrem (now a district of Kerpen), Cologne. The inheritance of his parents, the castle, and the agricultural and fruit-growing possessions weighted heavily on the young von Trips, who one day had to take sole responsibility for all these lands. From 1951 onwards, he struggled to train to become a qualified farmer as his true passion was racing.[3]
Von Trips had diabetes during his career and he always had high sugar snacks during the races to compensate for his low blood sugar levels.[4] [5] Von Trips participated in 29 Formula One World Championship Grand Prix races, debuting on 2 September 1956. He won two races, secured one pole position, achieved six podiums, and scored a total of 56 championship points.[6] [7] [8] Friends and fellow draws gave him the "Taffy" nickname.[9]
Von Trips sustained a concussion when he spun off track at the Nürburgring during trial runs for a sports car race held in May 1957. His Ferrari was destroyed. It was the only one of its marque to be entered in the Gran Turismo car class of larger than 1600 cc.[10] Von Trips was forced out of a Royal Automobile Club Grand Prix at Silverstone, in July 1958, when his Ferrari came into the pits on the 60th lap with no oil.[11] The following August, he was fifth at Porto in the 1958 Portuguese Grand Prix, which was won by Stirling Moss in a Vanwall. Von Trips completed 49 laps and was one lap behind at the finish. Moss was more than five minutes ahead of Mike Hawthorn, who finished second in a Ferrari.[12]
In July 1960, von Trips was victorious in a Formula Two event in a Ferrari, with a newly introduced engine in the rear. The race was in Stuttgart and was called the Solitude Formula Two Grand Prix. It was a 20-lap event with the winner averaging 102.21mph over 142miles.[13] He won the Targa Florio, 10-lap 448miles race, in May 1961. Von Trips achieved an average speed of 64.26mph in his Ferrari with Olivier Gendebien of Belgium as his co-driver.[14] Von Trips and Phil Hill traded the lead at Spa, Belgium, during the 1961 Belgian Grand Prix. Hill led most of the way in front of a crowd of 100,000 people. Ferraris captured the first four places at the race conclusion with von Trips finishing second. The Formula One World Championship driver competition at this juncture in 1961 was led by Hill with 19 points followed by von Trips with 18.[15]
In 1961, von Trips established a go-kart race track in Kerpen, Germany. The track was later leased by Rolf Schumacher, whose sons, Michael and Ralf, made their first laps there.[2] In the words of a 2007 German documentary film about von Trips, "If he had won then, he would have become as famous as Michael Schumacher later was – it would have been a kind of second miracle in Bern!"[3]
The 1961 Italian Grand Prix on 10 September saw von Trips tightly locked in the battle for the Formula One World Drivers' Championship that year with his teammate. On the second lap of the race at Monza, his Ferrari collided with Jim Clark's Lotus on the long straight before Parabolica, approaching what is now Curva Alboreto; he had made contact with Clark while he was trying to overtake him, which caused him to lose control of his car and went straight into the crowd at high speed.[16] His car became airborne and crashed into a side barrier, fatally throwing von Trips from the car, and killing fifteen spectators.[17] [18] [19] Von Trips died before reaching hospital.[20] The toll of the accident remains the worst in the history of Formula One.[21] As a result of the accident, the FIA banned Formula One from competing on circuits with steeply-banked corners.[22]
Clark and his car were subjected to an investigation;[23] he was initially accused of manslaughter, before the charges were dropped.[24] At the time, Clark described the accident by saying: "Von Trips and I were racing along the straightaway and were nearing one of the banked curves, the one on the southern end. We were about 100 metres from the beginning of the curve. Von Trips was running close to the inside of the track. I was closely following him, keeping near the outside. At one point von Trips shifted sideways so that my front wheels collided with his back wheels. It was the fatal moment. Von Trips's car spun twice and went into the guardrail along the inside of the track. Then it bounced back, struck my own car and bounced down into the crowd."[1] Movie footage of the crash that surfaced after the race showed that Clark's memory of the incident was inaccurate; after colliding with Clark, von Trips's car rode directly up an embankment on the outside of the track and struck a fence behind which spectators were closely packed.[25] At the time of his death, von Trips was leading the Formula One World Championship.[26] He had previous incidents at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, where he crashed cars in the 1956 Italian Grand Prix and the 1958 Italian Grand Prix, and was injured in both events.[1]
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position)
| Year | Entrant | Chassis | Engine | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | WDC | Points | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scuderia Ferrari | Lancia-Ferrari D50 | Ferrari V8 | ARG | MON | 500 | BEL | FRA | GBR | GER | ITA | NC | 0 | |||||
| Scuderia Ferrari | Lancia-Ferrari D50A | Ferrari V8 | ARG 6 * | 14th | 4 | ||||||||||||
| Ferrari 801 | MON Ret † | 500 | FRA | GBR | GER | PES | ITA | ||||||||||
| Scuderia Ferrari | Ferrari Dino 246 | Ferrari V6 | ARG | MON | NED | 500 | BEL | FRA | GBR | GER | POR | ITA | MOR | 12th | 9 | ||
| Dr Ing hcf Porsche KG | Porsche 718 F2 | Porsche Flat-4 | MON | 500 | NED | FRA | GBR | GER | POR | ITA | NC | 0 | |||||
| Scuderia Ferrari | Ferrari Dino 246 | Ferrari V6 | USA | ||||||||||||||
| Scuderia Ferrari | Ferrari Dino 246 | Ferrari V6 | ARG | MON | 500 | NED | BEL | FRA | GBR | POR | 7th | 10 | |||||
| Ferrari 246P F2 | ITA | ||||||||||||||||
| Scuderia Centro Sud | Cooper T51 | Maserati Straight-4 | USA | ||||||||||||||
| Scuderia Ferrari | Ferrari 156 | Ferrari V6 | MON | NED | BEL | FRA | GBR | GER | ITA | USA | 2nd | 33 | |||||
* Indicates shared drive with Cesare Perdisa and Peter Collins
† Indicates shared drive with Mike Hawthorn[27]
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position)(Races in italics indicate fastest lap)
| Year | Entrant | Chassis | Engine | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1957 | Scuderia Ferrari | Lancia D50 | Lancia V8 | BUE | SYR | PAU | GLV | NAP | RMS | CAE | INT | MOD | MOR | ||||||||||||
| 1961 | Scuderia Ferrari | Ferrari 156 | Ferrari V6 | LOM | GLV | PAU | BRX | VIE | AIN | SYR | NAP | LON | SIL | SOL DNA | KAN | DAN | MOD | FLG | OUL | LEW | VAL | RAN | NAT | RSA | |
| Year | Team | Co-Driver(s) | Car | Class | Laps | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1956 |  Porscke KG | Richard von Frankenberg | Porsche 550A Coupe | S 1.5 | 282 | 5th | 1st |
| 1958 |  Scuderia Ferrari | Wolfgang Seidel | Ferrari 250 TR/58 | S 3.0 | 101 | DNF | DNF |
| 1959 | Porscke KG |  Jo Bonnier | Porsche 718 RSK | S 2.0 | 182 | DNF | DNF |
| 1960 | Scuderia Ferrari |  Phil Hill | Ferrari 250 TR59/60 | S 3.0 | 22 | DNF | DNF |
| 1961 | SEFAC Ferrari | Richie Ginther | Ferrari 246 SP | S 2.5 | 231 | DNF | DNF |