Wolfgang von Trips

Early life and family

The son of a noble Rhineland family, 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. 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.

Formula One and sports car driver career

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. 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. Friends and fellow draws gave him the "Taffy" nickname.

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. 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. 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.

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 102.21 mph over 142 mi. He won the Targa Florio, ten-lap 448 mi race, in May 1961. Von Trips achieved an average speed of 64.26 mph in his Ferrari with Olivier Gendebien of Belgium as his co-driver. 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.

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. 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!"

Death

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 American teammate Phil Hill. 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. His car became airborne and crashed into a side barrier, fatally throwing von Trips from the car, and killing fifteen spectators. Von Trips died before reaching the hospital. The toll of the accident remains the highest in the history of Formula One. As a result of the accident, the FIA banned Formula One from competing on circuits with steeply-banked corners.

Clark and his car were subjected to an investigation; he was initially accused of manslaughter, before the charges were dropped. 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." 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. At the time of his death, von Trips was leading the Formula One World Championship. 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.

Racing record

Complete Formula One World Championship results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position)

:** Indicates shared drive with Cesare Perdisa and Peter Collins* :† Indicates shared drive with Mike Hawthorn

Formula One Non-Championship results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

24 Hours of Le Mans results

Notes

References

References

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12. (1958-07-20). "Collins' Ferrari Wins Royal Automobile Club's Grand Prix at Silverstone; Moss Forced Out In English Race". The New York Times.
13. (1958-08-25). "Moss Wins Portugal's Grand Prix". The New York Times.
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23. King, Ryan Erik. (2023-09-26). "These Are The Worst Crashes In Motorsports History − 1961 Italian Grand Prix".
24. Schneider, Jürgen. (2021-09-10). ["On the death of Count Trips: Clark mechanic recounts"](https://www.speedweek.com/formel1/news/181330/Zum-Tod-von-Graf-Trips-Clark-Mechaniker-erzaehlt.html?lang=en ).
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