Wolfgang von Trips Print, Vintage Motorsport Poster, Germania Retro Wall Art, Sports Gift, Black and White Sports Print

WOLFGANG VON TRIPS — a LostTeams editorial print telling the existing story of Wolfgang von Trips, 1957-1961.

Going into the Italian Grand Prix on 10 September 1961, Wolfgang von Trips led the world championship. He had won at Zandvoort and Aintree. He needed a solid finish at Monza to become the first German world champion in the history of Formula 1.

He was thirty-three, from an aristocratic family in the Rhineland, and had a reputation among the other drivers as one of the more careful ones, which in that era was a real distinction.

On the second lap, going into the Parabolica, his Ferrari touched the Lotus of Jim Clark. The Ferrari was thrown into an earth bank and along a fence lining the spectator area.

Von Trips was thrown from the car and killed. Fifteen spectators died with him.

The race was not stopped. This is the detail that stays with people. Under the practice of the time, and with the crowd unaware of the scale of what had happened, the grand prix continued, and Phil Hill won it, and with it the world championship.

Hill said afterwards that he could not enjoy any of it. He remains the first American world champion, and the circumstances have shadowed that ever since.

There is a photograph taken minutes before the start, of von Trips on the grid, that circulates every September. He had qualified fourth and started from the second row, which is where the accident began: he moved across to defend his line into the Parabolica and Clark was already there.

Italian authorities opened a manslaughter investigation which ran for years and eventually cleared Clark and Ferrari.

Germany did not produce a Formula 1 world champion until Michael Schumacher in 1994, thirty-three years later.

Monza's banked oval section, part of the combined circuit used that day, was abandoned for grand prix racing soon afterwards. The sport's relationship with spectator protection began, very slowly, to change.

Von Trips had spent part of that summer setting up a karting school for young German drivers. It opened after his death and is still the origin story of a good deal of German motorsport.

Hang it. One day someone will ask you what it is, and you will know where to begin.