Behra’s car showed promise, too – Hans Herrmann finishing second to Moss’s Cooper-Borgward at Reims – but sadly its creator would be killed within weeks when his Porsche RSK Spyder flew over the rim of AVUS’s towering brick banking.
The following season saw a full-scale F2 assault from Porsche – and Moss was onboard albeit in a 718/2 in the privateer colours of Rob Walker; von Hanstein knew which side his pretzel was buttered. So, too, was Hill, who wrote of the Porsche: “It was entirely different from the normal run of British cars. I am not sure that its road holding was as good as the British cars, but it felt solid and always seemed as though it was one unit and not a collection of parts.”
Yet 718/2 was undeniably an odd-bod: a six-speed synchro gearbox with rubbery change; drum brakes within steel wheels; Beetle-derived trailing-link front suspension; and a long-in-the-tooth air-cooled flat-four that sounded like a gaggle of racing motorbikes. Moss reckoned the latter “unburstable” – until it burst while leading the Syracuse GP in Sicily in March. Gearbox problems then cost him victory in the Heysel GP at Brussels – he finished second to Jack Brabham’s Cooper – and Innes Ireland’s Lotus 18 beat him fair and square in Goodwood’s Lavant Cup.
He would, however, head a Porsche 1-2-3 in April’s Aintree 200 and another in September’s non-championship Austrian GP at Zeltweg airfield. He also won a brace of end-of-season races in South Africa, at Killarney and East London. But it was Jo Bonnier who scored the model’s most important victory, heading a 1-2-4-5-6 results in a very wet German GP run for F2 cars only on the Nürburgring’s Sudschleife. Porsche meanwhile was developing a flat-eight for F1 in 1961. Delays, however, forced its continued reliance on 718 – still on drums, still on carbs.
Bar a nifty piece of slipstreaming that belied Ferrari newcomer Giancarlo Baghetti’s inexperience, Porsche’s new signing Gurney would have won the French GP at Reims. Gurney also finished second at Monza and Watkins Glen and was fourth – equal on points with Moss – in the championship, the American admitting to learning a lot thanks to rugged Porsche reliability. With the new engine in a new steel-tube chassis ready at last, there was reason for hope for 1962.