The Amazing Summer of '55
  The Year of Motor Racing's Biggest Dramas, Worst Tragedies and Greatest Victories
The 1955 motor racing season was like no other, before or since. It was the year of motor racing's biggest dramas, worst tragedies and greatest victories. Master storyteller Eoin Young chronicles that extraordinary season half a century ago, when motorsport was passionate, heroic and highly dangerous.
Stirling Moss made his name with his legendary Mille Miglia win, sharing a works Mercedes 300SLP sports car with journalist Denis Jenkinson. They shattered the record for the 1000-mile race on Italian roads, averaging close to 100mph for the ten-hour drive. Moss also sprang into the record books with his first World Championship win at Aintree. Juan Manuel Fangio and Moss would dominate Grand Prix racing in the works Mercedes-Benz W196s, usually finish first and second.
Other glories included Tony Brooks' win at Syracuse in a Connaught. It was the first Grand Prix victory by a British driver in a British car since the 1920s.
But the '55 season saw tragedy too. Any exultation was strained with the horror of a crash at Le Mans that threatened the very future of motor racing, when Pierre Levegh's 300SLR scythed through the crowd, killing more than 80 people. A month before this disaster, double World Champion Alberto Ascari, after taking the lead in the Monaco Grand Prix, hurled his Lancia D50 into the harbor. Having survived that, he was killed a few days later in a freak accident, testing a Ferrari sports car.
Fortunes changed constantly. Ferrari was so desperate for success that it created a two-cylinder 2.5-liter engine specifically for Monaco. This tore the test bed apart but the team then flunked a victory. Ruth Ellis murdered a racing driver and was the last woman to be hanged in Britain, Jean Behra lost his ear at Dunrod, and the wreckage of movie star James Dean's race Porsche—reused in other cars—seemed to have a malign afterlife.
About the Author
Eoin Young, an Autocar columnist for over three decades, won the Timo Makinen Trophy for outstanding motorsport coverage with his autobiography It Beats Working. His other books for Haynes include Forza Amon! and Jim Clark and his most successful Lotus.
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