1958 Formula One season
The 1958 Formula One season was the 12th season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It featured the 9th World Championship of Drivers, the first International Cup for F1 Manufacturers and five non-championship Formula One races. The World Championship was contested over eleven races between 19 January and 19 October 1958. The Indianapolis 500 counted towards the Drivers' Championship but not the Manufacturers' Cup.
1958 was a watershed year that saw the end of the dominance of Italian teams, and the end of the career of five time World Champion Juan Manuel Fangio. The Maestro took pole and fastest lap in the first round, took a leave to test for the Indy 500, then retired after finishing fourth again in his second race, realizing his time and that of Maserati had come. Nearly all 1958 races were won by British drivers, and no less than five Brits led the final standings. British engineering took over, too. The season began with two wins for the nimble Rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout cars that would dominate F1 from 1959 onwards. After the two Cooper-Climax wins, scored by the private Rob Walker team, not by the Cooper "factory" nor by a Coventry Climax entry, newcomer Vanwall with a standard layout front engine car won six of the eight remaining GPs and the Manufacturers Cup, without producing cars for customers to take advantage of the new title. Maseratis failed to score a podium and were outclassed without Fangio, but Ferraris won twice, and were quick and reliable enough to win six second places and the Drivers' Championship.
British driver Mike Hawthorn driving for Ferrari won his first and only Drivers' Championship after a close battle with compatriot and perpetual runner-up Stirling Moss, becoming the first British driver to become Formula One World Champion. Following the Portuguese Grand Prix, Hawthorn faced a penalty, but Moss sportingly spoke up for him. Moss would go on to win four races over Hawthorn's one, but the points from the Portuguese round enabled Hawthorn to claim the title. It was the first of only two occasions in Formula One history where a driver won the championship, having won only one race in the season, the other being Keke Rosberg in 1982. Vanwall won the inaugural Manufacturers' Cup.
Four drivers died during the season: American Pat O'Connor during the Indianapolis 500, Italian Luigi Musso (Ferrari) during the French Grand Prix, his British teammate Peter Collins during the German Grand Prix, and Brit Stuart Lewis-Evans (Vanwall) during the Moroccan Grand Prix. After Collins' accident, Hawthorn had decided to retire from racing at the end of the season. So he did, but then was killed in a road accident three months later.
Since the early 1900s, Grand Prix racing had been dominated by front-engined cars, but this was the last championship to be won by one. In single seaters, the driver either has to sit on top of the drive shaft, or next to an asymmetric drive train. Even though Porsche-designed Auto Union Silver Arrows had successfully demonstrated the Rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout in the 1930s, and some of the Porsche 550 sportscars that had been introduced in 1953 even ran competitively as Formula Two in the 1957 German Grand Prix, no F1 driver was put in front of his engine until the Bugatti Type 251 showed up in 1956. From 1959 on, mid-engined cars, with their better road holding, increased driving comfort, lighter weight, and ease on tyres and mechanical components (particularly brakes), would have the upper hand.