RETRO JEAN BEHRA
50 AUTOSPORT.COM 1 AUGUST 2019umps, burns and scars were badges of honour.
A magazine photograph of this stocky man in
his (not so) smalls annotated those broken bones
and torn tendons: thumb, wrists, elbow, arms,
collarbone, skull, ribs, vertebra and kneecap.
Yet the Nice man with the prosthetic ear – removed gleefully
regularly for unsettling effect – appeared blissful in a Christ-
on-the-cross pose.
Jean Marie Behra loved a racing life ‘lived above the shop’:
testing, testing, testing; coffee and a cigarette; a game of cards;
more coffee and another cigarette; racing; and talking about
racing. He held dear a much-stamped passport – another badge- that listed his profession as pilote. And if ever he wondered
whether that hard-pressed luck was finite, he never said.
He plunged down a ravine while leading the 1952 Carrera
Panamericana for Gordini – and there he left a part of his nose.
He was forced to miss the 1955 Le Mans 24 Hours after being run
down in the pitlane. And he lost that ear to a slicing goggles’ lens
in an accident during the 1955 RAC Tourist Trophy at Dundrod.
Races all blighted by tragedy. No wonder Behra, born 16 February
1921, looked older than his age.
His fearlessness and acceptance of pain was befitting of a
biking background: he was a four-time national champion astride
a 500cc Moto Guzzi. Nor did he know when he was beaten.
Stirling Moss kept a mental list of rivals who could be ‘ticked
off’ once overtaken. It included several high-profile names that
might surprise. Behra’s was not among them.
The non-championship Berlin Grand Prix of September 1954
was staged as a demonstration of Mercedes-Benz supremacy.
B
GRAND PRIX
RACING’S
GREATEST
LOSER?
Jean Behra was killed 60 years
ago today. He never won a world
championship Formula 1 race, but he
was far better than that fact suggests
PAUL FEARNLEY(^) PHOTOGRAPHY