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Formula 1 1953

The 1953 World Championship remained a F2 affair but F1 trundled on in Britain and France. Most races were really libre races; only Albi and Rouen were restricted to F1 and F2 cars. Ken Wharton's BRM V16 was numerically the most successful car of the year, winning four races, but a variety of Ferraris won the major races, Rosier's 375 winning at Albi and Farina taking two: Rouen in the works 625 in 1954 F1 spec and Silverstone in the Thinwall Special. Gordini also took the opportunity to air their 1954 F1 car and would have been encouraged by Maurice Trintignant's outings at Albi and Rouen.

The nine most significant races for F1 cars in the 1953 season are shown below.

The races

06 Apr 1953 > Glover Trophy at Goodwood (libre)

23 May 1953 > Formule Libre race at Charterhall (libre)

31 May 1953 > Grand Prix d'Albi

28 Jun 1953 > Grand Prix de Rouen at Rouen-les-Essarts

18 Jul 1953 > British Grand Prix Libre Race at Silverstone (libre)

25 Jul 1953 > USAF Trophy Race at Snetterton (libre)

15 Aug 1953 > Formule Libre race at Charterhall (libre)

26 Sep 1953 > Goodwood Trophy at Goodwood (libre)

03 Oct 1953 > Hastings Trophy at Castle Combe (libre)

Previous: the 1952 F1 season

1949-1953 F1 seasons

David McKinney

This area of ORC is dedicated to the memory of David McKinney (8 April 1945 - 25 February 2014) who was a great friend to OldRacingCars.com and one of its key contributors. Together with Adam Ferrington, David researched this area with his usual rigour and compiled the definitive race history of these seasons. David is best known for his expertise on the Maserati 250F and for his peerless knowledge of motor racing in his native New Zealand but the range of his knowledge was vast, matched only by the generosity with which he shared his knowledge. He is greatly missed.

The research

Researching F1 in this early period is very different to researching the 1960s and 1970s. Before the late 1960s, there were no neat tables of chassis numbers available as a start point in contemporary publications and it was quite common for even the model of the car to go unmentioned in a report. Although Ferrari, Gordini, Maserati and Talbot-Lago numbered their cars in a reasonably consistent fashion, HWM, Alta and others did not and Alfa Romeo numbered frames and engines separately, assembling a car as required for each race and only labelling it with the entry number for that race.

However, we have the advantage that no two cars were ever identical - no two Ferraris are quite the same and Maserati 4CLTs and HWMs each have features that are unique to them. A trained eye can spot these differences in contemporary pictures and construct a race history for each car. The other major resource we have for this period is Denis Jenkinson's Racing Car Review, in which he covered each team in considerable detail, often giving important clues to individual car identities.

The results used here were compiled by David McKinney and Adam Ferrington from a range of sources including Autocourse, Motor Sport and Autosport. Individual car identities were also compiled by Adam and David.

Other sources include Talbot-Lago de Course by Pierre Abeillon, Les Gordini by Robert Jarraud, Gordini – Un Sorcier, Une Equipe by Christian Huet, The History of English Racing Automobiles by David Weguelin and Michael Müller's immaculately researched histories of all the 1948-1950 Ferrari 125s.

Since David's sad death, Adam and Allen have agreed that these pages will remain unaltered from now on, as a lasting testimony to David's expertise.