The new Grand Prix formula for the 1961 season placed a minimum car weight of 450kg, limited engine size to 1500cc and banned the use of supercharging.  The new rules were met with widespread protest that these cars would be too underpowered and lose fan interest.  The British teams were most effected as they did not have a suitable engine and would be at a disadvantage to Ferrari for the foreseeable future.  The development of a new V-8 Coventry-Climax engine was running into problems and most of the British teams had to rely on an old four-cylinder unit.  Ferrari, already having converted to the rear-engine format, would have the advantage this year.  Driving for Ferrari were two Americans, Phil Hill and Richie Ginther who were joined by German Wolfgang von Trips.  Competitor Stirling Moss was relegated to a year old Lotus having been refused the latest factory model.  Yet Moss would score the greatest victory of his career at Monaco.  Moss took the checkered flag 3.6 seconds in front of Ginther who was followed by Hill and von Trips in the other Ferraris. The Ferraris would not be stopped again.  Even Reims where all of the factory Ferraris would fall victim to mechanical problems, was won by a private entrant, Giancarlo Baghetti, in a Ferrari.

Hill's 1961 championship was the result of one of the toughest season-long battles in Grand Prix history.  In their new mid-engine Ferraris Hill and von Trips swapped the title lead from race to race.  There were personal triumphs, like Hill driving the first-ever sub-9 minute lap at the difficult Nurburgring.  But also frustrations, as when a competitor knocked him out of the French Grand Prix when Hill was well in the lead.  It was not until the penultimate race of the year, the Italian GP at Monza, that the title was settled, and only when Trips was killed in a first-lap accident.

Alan Henry writes in Ferrari:  The Grand Prix Cars, "In order to conserve their engines during this long hard run, the Ferraris were all fitted with high final-drive ratios which meant that they were tardy getting off the line, allowing Jim Clark's Lotus 21 to get in amongst them on the first lap.  Coming down to Parabolica second time round, Von Trips was getting into his stride and had just passed Jim Clark before the braking area, but it appears that he moved over on the Lotus before he had completely cleared its left front wheel.  The two cars interlocked wheels, and the Ferrari cartwheeled up the bank, along the spectator fence, before crashing back on to the grass at the side of the circuit.  Clark emerged unhurt, badly shaken, but Von Trips had been hurled from his car and lay fatally injured at the track side. Behind the spectator fence, fourteen members of the public had also been killed."

The shark-nosed 156 proved to be an unbeatable car and while Hill and Von Trips fought for the World Championship, Baghetti made history at the French GP by becoming the first man in the history of the World Championship to win on his debut.  After the 1962 season, all 156's were ordered destroyed by Enzo Ferrari himself.  No original example exists today.

The 2001 Formula One season is poised to launch March 4th in Melbourne Australia, with Ferrari flush from a long-overdue championship title in 2000.  I look forward to that and many other events coming this year. For up-to-date F1 news online, I suggest you browse ten-tenths.com for a preferred site.  For fantastic images of past F1 cars, I invite you to visit www.crosswinds.net/~retro5/home.htm.