When a breakaway series tried and failed to usurp F1

He misread the room, it is fair to say. Britain's racing establishment had gathered at the RAC Club on Pall Mall to celebrate its first world champions: Mike Hawthorn and Vanwall, and Cooper's rear-engined breakthrough; French party poopers, therefore, beware.

Yet Augustin Perouse, President of the Commission Sportive Internationale, the sporting arm of the FIA, blundered on. Brushing aside the invited viewpoints of Hawthorn and Stirling Moss, plus those of team bosses Tony Vandervell and Charlie Cooper, his announcement of a Formula 1 of reduced power (1500-1300cc normally aspirated) and increased weight (500kg minimum) for 1961 went down like a loose spanner in the footwell.

There were reasonable arguments for change - the 2.5-litre formula had been in situ since 1954 and the category was clearly on the cusp of a technological shift - but the jolly old evening of 29 October 1958 was not the time for them.

The mood swiftly turned sour and curdled thereafter. The Brits were still cheesed indeed when in March 1960 the sporting sub-committee of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, chaired by long-time Jaguar team manager 'Lofty' England, issued a challenge to the FIA's hegemony by refusing to recognise its looming new F1 and demanding a three-year extension to the current one. Or else.

The CSI, caught unawares by the vociferousness of the initial rejection, played a smart hand thereafter. Though Britain wielded only one vote, its on-track domination - Aston Martin had completed the set in 1959 by winning the (three-litre) World Sportscar Championship - made its voice powerful. So the governing body arranged a special meeting in Lausanne and listened carefully - without heeding entirely.

It legitimised a parallel premier single-seater series - keep your enemies close - without awarding it world championship status. It also trimmed 50kg from the new F1's minimum weight to appease uppity constructors. Most else was kept vague.

The Autosport editorial of 29 April spelled out the dilemma: "Will alternative world championships be created outside the sphere of operation of the FIA, or will today's entrants quietly forget about their objections and go ahead and build 1.5-litre Formula 1 cars?"

In May 1961 Moss would score the greatest win of his single-seater career - as well as his most satisfying. They were not one and the same. The latter was achieved in the renegade three-litre Intercontinental Formula. By far the more famous of them, however, was achieved the following weekend at Monaco and in the presence of Ferrari - factors that all but guaranteed F1's primacy.

PLUS: Stirling Moss' 10 greatest drives

The British had banked naively on Ferrari's support since Italy's CSI representative Count 'Johnny' Lurani, an Anglophile and an ally, had waved a letter of admonishment - signed in Enzo's trademark purple ink - under Perouse's nose.

The reality, however, was that Ferrari had been developing its 1.5-litre 'Dino' V6 since 1956 - it first raced in April 1957 - and thus was far ahead of the latest F1 game; a fact confirmed by inexperienced newcomer Giancarlo Baghetti's comprehensive defeat of the unprepared and underpowered BRM, Cooper and Lotus teams at the non-championship Syracuse Grand Prix of 25 April 1961.

After taking the lead from Jack Brabham's Cooper on lap 23, Moss would double the entire field within 30 more laps. His genius had made Intercontinental look bad

Whereupon airy rumour disappeared in a puff of cold, hard logic: there would be no Intercontinental Ferraris at Silverstone a fortnight later. There had been warning signs. The CSI's provisional Intercontinental calendar - a minimum of six rounds was required to warrant championship status for drivers and constructors - had included two Italian races: Monza's Lottery GP in June and the grandiosely titled 'GP of the Century' in Turin in September.

Both had been cancelled by the time of the opening round in May. Not that Moss cared overly. Such was his margin over second-best, what he wanted as much as anything was fun, something that a torquey, well-balanced 2.5-litre 'Lowline' Cooper-Climax offered in spades.

He had missed the toe-in-the-water 100-mile Lombank Trophy at Snetterton - held jointly for Intercontinental and F1 cars - on 26 March, but had won the Lavant Trophy at Goodwood on Easter Monday by 0.6 seconds after a feisty battle with the Tommy Atkins-run sister car of Bruce McLaren.

Just nine started the Goodwood race (including Graham Hill, pictured above leading Moss), a standalone 50-mile sprint that had shared the programme with the 100-mile F1 Glover Trophy. The BRDC's Daily Express International Trophy on 6 May, therefore, was Intercontinental's acid test: 19 cars competing over a 'GP' distance of 234 miles.

Its field was strong but hardly international. Porsche, happy graduating to F1 from 1500cc F2 with minimum effort and expense, had been bemused by British intransigence throughout the whole sorry saga, and its absence was, therefore, no surprise. But there had been expectation that the extra 500cc would pique American interest; it was 'met' by a singleton overmatched entry from Scarab.

PLUS: The front-engined "s*** beetle" that was born obsolete

There had been encouraging noises Stateside, but the Indianapolis 500's mooted Intercontinental inclusion - now that the US's greatest race no longer counted towards the F1 world championship - was pie in the sky. The Watkins Glen round scheduled for October was still on - for now - but already a series born of British huff-and-puff was looking like a house of straw.

It rained heavily at Silverstone and as Tony Brooks, Jim Clark, Innes Ireland, McLaren (on pole again), Graham Hill, Ron Flockhart and John Surtees (who ran as high as second in the bespoke Vanwall 'Whale' in its only race) slid, spun and/or crashed, Moss (below) drove as only he could. After taking the lead from Jack Brabham's Cooper on lap 23, he would double the entire field within 30 more laps. His genius had made Intercontinental look bad.

In contrast it would make F1's 'kiddy cars' look exciting at Monaco while easing British fears that the more powerful 'Sharknose' Ferraris would be unbeatable.

By the time of the Guards Trophy at Brands Hatch on 7 August, Moss in Rob Walker's privateer Lotus had done it again: beaten the Ferraris, this time assisted by a brave tyre choice in changeable conditions at the German GP. He arrived at Brands 'fresh' from the Nurburging - after a noisy flight in a Dakota - and thus was only half-joking when he suggested that this Bank Holiday Intercontinental 201-miler be reduced from 76 to 50 laps so that everybody could get to bed early. Life in the farce lane.

Moss had won Silverstone's 150-mile British Empire Trophy - the name says it all - on 8 July, lapping all bar runner-up Surtees, now at the wheel of a Yeoman Credit-run Cooper, and the BRM of Graham Hill in another rain-hit Intercontinental encounter. Despite this obvious display of skill, he had crossed the line to "a bored silence", according to Motor Sport magazine.

By way of an ill omen, Chuck Daigh had crashed the Scarab during practice, wrecking the car and putting himself in hospital. Motor Sport warned: "It seems the Intercontinental Formula will die after the Brands Hatch race unless something drastic happens to put new life in it."

Moss and Surtees would again battle it out, this time in the dry. Surtees led before crashing, and poleman Moss's broken gearbox handed victory to the Cooper of Brabham. There were only seven finishers - a genuine whimper - and, as predicted, this was to be the final race of a series rendered null and void already. (Watkins Glen switched its 8 October date to F1 when asked to host its nation's grand prix in Riverside's stead.)

Sixth that day at Brands Hatch, five laps in arrears, was the front-engined three-litre Aston Martin of Melbourne's Lex Davison. That extra 500cc had been meant to embolden competitors from Down Under too, but although there was a clear link to the 'winter sun' races in Australia and New Zealand - preceding the 1964 codification of the Tasman Series as a 2.5-litre category - these were Formule Libre affairs. Intercontinental was dead in the water before it had crossed the English Channel.

The furore had been quelled by the arrival in the latter half of 1961 of a brace of V8s that would put the superior chassis of the British garagisti back on top in F1

Its final faint hope had been USAC in the US, but provision of an Intercontinental class at the first two rounds of its 1962 Road Racing Championship - at Hilltop Raceway in Louisiana and Indianapolis Raceway Park - came to naught; it was run entirely for sportscars thereafter.

The permitting of stock-block engines proved a dead end too. Scarab had built a rear-engined single-seater based around Buick's new aluminium V8, enlarged to 3.9 litres, with a view to it going into production, only for a regulation change - issued by a CSI sensing victory and stipulating stock heads as well as blocks - to render the car ineligible in this form. It raced just once, a recovered Daigh finishing fourth behind a trio of Coopers - but ahead of Moss's Lotus - in a Libre encounter at Australia's Sandown Park on 11 March 1962.

In truth, the furore had been quelled by the arrival in the latter half of 1961 of a brace of V8s that would put the superior chassis of the British garagisti back on top in F1. BRM designer Peter Berthon had predicted that any Racing Green alliance would prove fleeting and insisted therefore that a 1.5-litre engine be the priority.

Coventry Climax in turn had pointed out that though its FPF 'four' would not stretch to three litres - though it ran to 2.75 for Brabham's (unconnected) 1961 Indy 500 bid - it could, however, act as an F1 stopgap prior to the delivery of its new multi-cylinder.

F1 in its 1.5-litre guise ran unchallenged for four further seasons, accelerating technology while providing healthy competition. The subsequent 'Return to Power' of 1966 caught the Brits on the hop - rather than hopping mad this time - but their maturing racing infrastructure of specialist suppliers and sub-contractors, plus increasing and targeted industry involvement, soon had them back at the front.

Proved right, this fundamentally three-litre atmo guise would, bar a single season (the totally turbo 1986), hold sway for the next 40 years and provide the spectacle and stability for F1 to go global - the British teams flourished as a result.

But it hadn't hurt that others had prevented them from getting too far ahead of themselves in 1958. The one step forward/two back of the Intercontinental Formula was a valuable lesson for all that has in the main be heeded since: there can only be - and need only be - one F1 at any one time.