The champion won one race. The runner-up won four. The title was decided by one point.
On 19 October 1958 at Casablanca, Mike Hawthorn finished second to Stirling Moss and took the Formula One title 42 points to 41 — one win against Moss's four, with a margin that hung on seven points taken from him at Porto and handed back at 11 that night.
Stirling Moss won the last race of the 1958 Formula One season. It was his fourth championship win of the year. Mike Hawthorn, who won one race all season, took the world championship from him by a single point. 12
The race was the Moroccan Grand Prix, run on 19 October 1958 at Ain-Diab, a road circuit on the Atlantic coast south of Casablanca. It was the eleventh and final round of the championship, and the only world championship Grand Prix Morocco has ever staged. 1
Both men were English, one driving a Ferrari and one a Vanwall, and the title stayed open until the last afternoon of the year. 3
What Moss had to do
Hawthorn arrived with 40 points and Moss with 32. 1
The scoring gave 8 points for a win, 6 for second, 4 for third, 3 for fourth and 2 for fifth, plus one for fastest lap. 2
Moss could take the title only by winning with fastest lap while Hawthorn finished third or lower. Every other combination left Hawthorn champion. 1
The circuit
Ain-Diab had been laid out in six weeks the year before, on roads that already existed: the coast road, the Casablanca–Azemmour road, and the Boulevard Panoramique running between them. 4
The lap measured about 7.6 kilometres. The race was 53 of them, 403.754 kilometres in all. 1
Mohammed V opened the circuit before the race, with the future King Hassan II beside him. 5
The race
Twenty-five cars started, six of them Formula Two Coopers running in a class of their own. 5
Hawthorn took pole by a tenth of a second: 2:23.1 to Moss's 2:23.2. 1
Moss led from the flag. Phil Hill came through from the second row and ran alongside him. On lap three Hill outbraked himself into an escape road, and Moss was clear. 5
At 25 laps Moss was 20 seconds ahead of Hill. Hawthorn ran third, holding off Tony Brooks. 1
On lap 30 Brooks's engine broke. Hawthorn was third on the road, behind his own Ferrari teammate. 5
Second place paid 6 points and third paid 4. Six points from that finish would take Hawthorn to 42 and the title. Four would leave him on 40, one behind Moss. 2
The order
Ferrari's pit signalled Hill to let Hawthorn through. 5
Hill was 27 seconds behind Moss with no prospect of catching him, so the order cost the team nothing. 1
Motor Sport's man put it plainly: "Hill eased right up and let Hawthorn by." Hill's lead was large enough that the pass came only on lap 39. 5
The fire
On lap 41 Stuart Lewis-Evans, running fifth in the third Vanwall, broke his engine in a corner and slid off the road. The car caught fire and burned out. 1
Lewis-Evans climbed out with severe burns and was flown back to Britain. He died on 25 October, six days after the race. 1
Tony Vandervell, whose cars had just won the race, gave up his involvement in Grand Prix racing. 1
The flag
Moss won by 1 minute 24.7 seconds, having set fastest lap on lap 21 at 2:22.5. 1
Hawthorn finished second, and the championship read 42 points to 41. 1
The New York Times put the whole thing in a headline the next morning: "Hawthorn Takes World Driving Title by Finishing Second to Moss." Underneath it ran a subheading, "Moroccan Victor Trails by a Point." 3
How a one-win champion adds up
Hawthorn's season was one win, five second places and one third. 2
He had come close to more. At Monaco he led at half distance when his engine blew. At Monza he was a minute clear when his clutch began to slip and Brooks went by him. 7
The championship counted a driver's best six results. 2
Hawthorn scored 49 points. Forty-two of them counted, and the seven that did not were his third place in Argentina, his fifth in the Netherlands, and the point he took at Monaco for fastest lap before his engine failed. 2
Both men scored points in races they never finished, because fastest lap paid on its own. Moss's 41 included one for the lap record at the Nürburgring, where he retired. 2
Six points for second place in Casablanca moved Hawthorn from 40 to 42. The new result pushed his Argentine third place, worth four, out of his best six. 2
Seven points that nearly vanished
The Portuguese Grand Prix was held at Porto on 24 August. The championship had never raced in Portugal before, and the circuit ran through the streets with tramlines down the middle of the main straight. 8
Hawthorn finished second to Moss, after a pit stop to have his brakes tightened and a fastest lap on his way back through the field. 8
Then the stewards disqualified him. He had spun on his last lap, stalled the engine and restarted by pushing the car, and the observers reported that he had done it facing the wrong way round the circuit. 8
Moss had watched all of it. He stopped his Vanwall with the engine running and waited to see whether his rival would get going. 9
Hawthorn had pushed the car along the pavement, which lay outside the circuit. Moss went to the officials and said so. 89
At 11 that night they gave Hawthorn second place back, and the seven points with it. 8
Asked years later whether he had any regrets, Moss said: "I had no hesitation in doing it." "I can't see how this is open to debate. He was not on the circuit." 9
The point from a misread board
The other half of those seven points was the fastest lap, and it survived by accident.
Hawthorn set the lap record at Porto on lap 36, just after his pit stop, at 2 minutes 32.37 seconds. 10
Vanwall's pit hung out a board reading "HAWT REC" to warn their driver that the record had gone. Moss misread it and did nothing about it. 8
The point stayed with the Ferrari. 8
What one point was worth
Take the seven points from Porto away and Hawthorn's best six come to 39. Moss's 41 wins by two. 2
Take away only the single point for fastest lap and Hawthorn finishes level with Moss on 41. The countback of best finishes then goes to the man with four wins. 29
The company it keeps
Formula One has had two champions who won only one race in their title season: Hawthorn in 1958 and Keke Rosberg in 1982. 2
Hawthorn was the first British world champion. 5
His Ferrari was the last front-engined car to win the title. 2
Vanwall's constructors' cup, sealed in the same race, was the first won by a British team. 5
Ninety-five days
Hawthorn's friend and teammate Peter Collins had been killed at the Nürburgring in August. Luigi Musso had died at Reims in July, in the race Hawthorn won. 27
Hawthorn had already decided to stop racing at the end of the season, and announced it once the title was his. 7
He drove in a bow tie, and the French called him Le Papillon. 7
On 22 January 1959, driving to London on the Guildford bypass, he clipped a bollard, glanced off a lorry and hit a tree. He was 29. 7
He had been world champion for 95 days.
Moss never won one. 9
References
- 11958 Moroccan Grand Prix — Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
- 21958 Formula One season — Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
- 3
- 4Ain-Diab Circuit — Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
- 51958 Moroccan Grand Prix race report — Motor Sport, November 1958
motorsportmagazine.com
- 6File:Ain-Diab.svg — Wikimedia Commons
commons.wikimedia.org
- 7Mike Hawthorn — Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
- 81958 Portuguese Grand Prix race report — Motor Sport, October 1958
motorsportmagazine.com
- 9
- 101958 Portuguese Grand Prix — Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
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