2008 marks the 50th anniversary of Mike Hawthorne becoming Britain’s first F1 World Champion. Hawthorne was a dashing figure and a natural talent in all sorts of cars. His tragic death in a road accident shortly after his title win only added to his legend.

 John Michael Hawthorn was, born in Mexborough, Yorkshire, England.  When he was small the family relocated to the South of England, close to the famous Brooklands track. From and early age Hawthorne was a regular spectator at the banked circuit. After leaving school Hawthorne started racing motorcycles eventually switching over to cars. By 1951 he was in Formula 2 and attracting notice.

He  made his Formula One debut in the following year’s Belgian Grand Prix, finishing an impressive 4th place.  He was signed by Ferrari for the 1953 and 1954 seasons scoring two Grand Prix vistories. However he was badly burned in a crash during the 1954 season and seriously considered retiring.

He was persuaded to join the Jaguar sports car team for 1955 and went on to win Le Mans despite being involved in the infamous accident that killed over 80 spectators. The Jaguar contract allowed him to drive for other marques so he campaigned a Vanwall for the first half of the season before rejoing Ferrari once more. Over the next few seasons he alternated between Jaguars in sports cars and Ferrari in Grand Prix racing.

Hawthorne’s World Championship in 1958 came at the expense of Stirling Moss who interceeded on Hawthorne’s beahlf and had a disqualification for Hawthorne pushing his car overturned. The reinstated points would cost Moss the championship at the season’s end.

With a world title won, Hawthorne announced his retirment from racing. Just a few months after the end of the season he was killed when his car went off  a wet road. How a driver of Hawthorne’s skill lost control is still something of a mystery.

The Official Mike Hawthorne Tribute site.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Drivers, Formula One, Le Mans, Racers Past. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.