1959 World Sportscar Championship
We’ve actually told this story in one of our GRRC Original documentaries, but it would be a brilliant story as a fiction film. Set against a backdrop of a three-way fight for world championship glory, fought out right here at Goodwood. The stars are John Wyer, irascible team manager of the Aston Martin sportscar programme, having been in charge for a decade with little success, and Stirling Moss, a young hotshot with the world in the palms of his hands. Moss is surrounded at all times by beautiful women and lives an apparently carefree playboy lifestyle, but belies this image by being able to drive almost anything faster than anyone else. Moss sets off on what seems at first like a victory lap (victory nine hours?) in the race, as he flies off into the lead at the start. He hands the car over to a team-mate, and heads off, only later to see smoke rising from the pits. Moss rushes over to find the cremated remains of the car he was going to take to championship victory. It’s all over. But not if Wyer has anything to do with it. In comes the sister car, using a pit box valiantly vacated by an independent team, next to the extinguished carcass of the old car, and Moss is bundled in. Moss is no longer in the lead, instead there is a deficit to be made up. And off he goes, lapping faster and faster, hurling the beautiful Aston Martin DBR1 past slower cars as if they are stationary. Hours later he’s home, the winner in an incredible, scarcely believable turnaround. Aston Martin are champions for the first and only time.