When Silverstone hosted the start of something big

What’s all the fuss about then? There will be plenty of celebrations for and references to Formula 1’s ‘75th birthday’ this month and, given the huge popularity of the multi-million-dollar global business that is one of the world’s biggest sports, that’s understandable.

But no one at Silverstone on Saturday 13 May 1950 had any idea of its importance – and it wasn’t the first F1 race…

Grand prix racing had been around a while – 44 years in fact – and there had even been a world championship, for manufacturers, between 1925 and 1927 prior to a European title for drivers that was serious but curtailed by the outbreak of the Second World War.

Formula 1 wasn’t new, either, having been first announced (and known as Formula A) in 1946, after which many races were run to those regulations. Given that many of the cars and drivers were also well known, it’s perhaps not surprising that the inauguration of the world championship for drivers arrived with a lot less fanfare than its 75th birthday.

Having said that, it did help bring Alfa Romeo back after a year out with its Gioacchino Colombo-designed Tipo 158. It had first appeared as a voiturette (very roughly equivalent to F2) in 1938, and the superb straight-eight supercharged ‘Alfetta’ had been developed into the car to beat in the 1.5-litre supercharged/4.5-litre unsupercharged category that eventually formed the first F1.

Its main advantage was power – around 350bhp in 1950, eventually climbing over 400bhp. The 158s had not been beaten since June 1946 and were still more than a year away from their downfall, their horrendous fuel consumption eventually proving their undoing.

The quartet of Alfa Romeo 158s for Fagioli, Fangio, Farina and Parnell

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Following a suggestion from Italian delegate Count Antonio Brivio, the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile’s sub-committee, the Commission Sportive Internationale, had followed the motorcycle community’s lead from 1949 in announcing a world championship.

It was only for drivers, with points handed out 8-6-4-3-2 to the top five finishers, plus a point for fastest lap, and there were just seven rounds.

The Silverstone race, given the European GP title, was joined by the established Monaco, Swiss, Belgian, French and Italian GPs, plus the Indianapolis 500, which was largely irrelevant to the competitors and run to different rules but helped justify the ‘world’ tag. The world championship provided something cohesive, the significance of which would come later.

Ferrari is F1’s longest-running competitor but no Ferraris were present for that Silverstone race. Enzo Ferrari withdrew his entries shortly before the event, it was thought due to a not uncommon disagreement over starting money

It should be noted that important non-championship F1 races continued, with their importance often assessed by the entry rather than whether points were awarded. The new world championship was barely mentioned in passing in media reports and not used to promote the event at the time; races were important for their own sake.

Indeed, in his book Formula 1: the real score?, Brian Harvey said this about 1950: “Many other races matched the championship rounds for quality of entries, so it cannot be said that the new championship was a completely dominating feature of the season.”

Ferrari is F1’s longest-running competitor but no Ferraris were present for that Silverstone race. Enzo Ferrari withdrew his entries shortly before the event, it was thought due to a not uncommon disagreement over starting money, which used to be paid to competitors to various levels depending on their perceived importance and attraction to spectators.

Non-Alfas were bit-part players – Philippe Etancelin’s Talbot-Lago dices with the Alta of Joe Kelly

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In any case, as subsequent races would show, Ferrari was not yet ready to challenge Alfa’s domination. No one was: the much-heralded BRM project was yet to start a race – though founder Raymond Mays turned demo laps at the inaugural championship race – and the assorted mix of Maserati, Talbot-Lago, ERA and Alta machinery was no match for the 158.

There were four Alfas, too: home racer Reg Parnell joined Alfa’s ‘three Fs’ of Luigi Fagioli, Juan Manuel Fangio and Giuseppe Farina. 

Facilities were rudimentary, though the circuit layout, redrawn significantly since the first race in 1948, would remain largely unchanged until 1975.

The Alfas were 1-2-3-4 in practice – filling the four-wide front row! – with just 0.2 seconds covering poleman Farina, Fagioli and Fangio. Parnell was 1.4s off pole but still 0.4s ahead of the best non-Alfa, Prince Bira’s Maserati 4CLT, similar to the cars that had won Silverstone’s first two GPs in 1948-49, albeit in the absence of Alfa Romeo. Final starter Johnny Claes was 18s off Farina’s 1m50.8s benchmark.

Italians Fagioli and Farina had been pre-war GP stars, the former now past his best and the latter known as something of a tough wheel-to-wheel competitor at a time when clashes could (and did) have fatal consequences. Argentinian Fangio was the new kid on the block – though was already approaching his 39th birthday! – having emerged as a frontrunner in 1949 with a Maserati.

Farina, Fagioli and Fangio all took turns in the lead, with Farina ahead more often than not before Fangio hit a straw bale and then retired following oil pipe damage. Farina won by 2.6s from Fagioli and took the fastest lap point, while Parnell was 52s off the lead after hitting a hare, but comfortably completed the podium.

Farina triumphed in the battle of Alfa Romeo’s ‘three Fs’

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The first non-Alfas were the 4.5-litre Talbot-Lagos of Yves Giraud-Cabantous and Louis Rosier. They were two laps down. Bob Gerard brought the top British car – an ERA – home in sixth, three laps down as the top non-scorer. 

“You just sort of set off at the same time the Alfas did,” recalled Gerard to Autosport’s Nigel Roebuck in 1988. “You didn’t have a lot to do with them, really. You just took care to watch your mirrors for flashes of red.”

Aside from the congestion into and out of the circuit, the event could be regarded as a success, despite the lack of opposition to Alfa Romeo. And the Royal Family’s presence, including King George VI, certainly added gravitas.

Autosport found the impressive debut of the 4.5-litre version of the Ferrari 375 V12 as more significant than the outcome of the world championship

But the event was more important in hindsight than it was at the time, now that more than 1100 world championship GPs have followed over the subsequent 75 years…

When Farina won the season finale at Monza in September, it was enough to make him F1’s first champion by three points from fellow three-time winner Fangio. But even then, Autosport found the impressive debut of the 4.5-litre version of the Ferrari 375 V12 as more significant than the outcome of the world championship, though Farina’s success was mentioned briefly in its race report, which was little more than a page.

In any case, a closer look at the season shows that Fangio was the outstanding driver of 1950. Not only did he lose the second place that would have made him champion on three separate occasions, but he also won far more non-championship races.

Not for the last time had the season’s best driver missed out on the crown, but Farina nevertheless has his place in history as the winner of both the first F1 world championship race and its first title.

An enthusiastic crowd of 100,000 filled the roped-off spectator areas

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A personal view

John Pearson, renowned Jaguar expert and avuncular figure around Silverstone since he stopped racing, bunked off grammar school in Towcester and found himself put to work at the 1950 Grand Prix d’Europe. At 87, it remains his second home.

“I first went to Silverstone in 1946, the RAF Open Day, to which locals were invited. Dad took me to what had been a bomber training airfield, using mainly Wellingtons. I remember climbing into a Lancaster.

“Dad and I attended the circuit’s first grand prix on 2 October 1948. He was a toolmaker in Northampton. We didn’t have a car, so went in his work colleague’s Hillman Minx. That circuit had ‘suicide’ straights [named for Segrave and Seaman], runways on which the cars raced head-on from what are now Copse and Stowe into the middle, where there were hairpins with no distance between them.

“Through Basil Cardew’s motoring columns in the Daily Express I had learned that British cars were green, Italians red, etc. I’d also been privileged to see the BRM V16 unveiled at Folkingham as component manufacturers were invited.

“Being patriotic, I’d wanted the ERA E-types – whose tails looked like the BRM’s – to win, but of course they didn’t. The Maserati 4CLT/48s turned up late, started from the back and were dominant, Luigi Villoresi beating pupil Alberto Ascari. 

“The 1950 GP started on the Thursday. I went to school in my blazer, but Silverstone was too close, so I walked out. At the track I found a lady – Kay Brown, wife of manager Jimmy, wonderful people – hammering stakes into the ground for roping off the spectator areas. I asked whether I might be allowed into the pit area, before Woodcote. She said, ‘OK, but don’t annoy anybody’, pointing me to cross the track.

“With the farm buildings being whitewashed and made ready for the weekend, I was introduced to Desmond Scannell [secretary of the BRDC], who suggested I did something useful. I found myself doing a variety of jobs, including going up ladders for Mr Antone [Anthony Curtis] and putting covers made of wartime gas mask material over his PA speakers.

“Now with a pass to get in, I met everyone and was in heaven. I couldn’t believe the noise the supercharged Alfa Romeos made.

Photo by: BRDC

“Cars became my life when I took a job with John Coundley, learning to prepare his Jaguar D-type. After Peter Sutcliffe bought it I still looked after it, then his Ferrari GTO.”

Race engineer Lofty England, engineering genius behind Bira’s White Mouse Stable ERAs and Jaguar’s Le Mans onslaughts, became “a great friend. The Silverstone Jaguar XJ6/12 fire tender was Lofty’s personal car. I drove it for years, including at many British GP meetings.

“From sneaking in as a lad, mechanicking and then getting into Dunlop tyre supply, I wouldn’t say I made a career in racing. I was more of an odd-jobs man, and wouldn’t change a thing.”

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Parnell finished third, with the rest of the field two laps behind

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