RETRO JEAN BEHRA
52 AUTOSPORT.COM 1 AUGUST 2019Behra led the 1957
British GP until his
Maserati failedFIVE GREAT BEHRA MOMENTS1952 MARNE GP
Reims, 29 June
The Gordini team was under the pump – even more so than
usual. Robert Manzon had hurt his arm in a crash during the
sportscar support race, and Behra’s single-seater had had
a quick-fix repair of its differential that its driver was in the
dark about. Yet the latter not only outpaced benchmark
Alberto Ascari’s Ferrari in searing heat, he outlasted him,
too, winning by a lap. France had a new hero.1954 PAU GP
Pau, 19 April
Behra started sixth – behind three works Ferraris and two
works Maseratis. After one hour (of three) his Gordini was
second – 35 seconds behind Maurice Trintignant’s Ferrari.
He reduced the gap to 7s during the second hour, the French
rivals swapping lap records. And with 10 minutes remaining- on lap 100 of an eventual 109 – Behra scrabbled by. His
winning margin on this occasion was 30 yards.
1957 MOROCCAN GP
Ain Diab, 27 October
Having split the Vanwalls on the front row, Behra’s Maserati
had to give best to the 1958-specification Ferrari Dino of
Peter Collins in the early stages of the race. This fast,
sand-swept road course caught out the Englishman,
however, and Behra took the lead, never to be headed.
His world champion team-mate Juan Manuel Fangio,
meanwhile, was struggling with the conditions – he left
the road, too – as well as tummy trouble.1958 REIMS F2
Reims, 6 July
The Coupe Internationale de Vitesse support race to the
French GP was meant to be a battle between Cooper and
Lotus, and Ferrari’s mini-F1 car. Nobody had reckoned with
Behra and his slippery Porsche RSK, a recent Le Mans
contender converted to a central driving position. But he led,
from pole, all bar a few hundred yards, repassing Stirling
Moss’s Cooper almost immediately on the third lap. Twenty
seconds to the good by half-distance, Behra won easily.1959 AINTREE 200
Aintree, 18 April
A slow start from the middle of the front row saw Behra cross
the line seventh after one lap. His Ferrari Dino had the latest
V6 – with 15bhp more than team-mate Brooks’s – but
struggled to match the Coopers’ cornering speed. Behra
fought back through the field to complete a team 1-2.Behra took the win
in 1957 Moroccan GP
after Collins went offAnd so it proved. Eventually. For the first 14 laps of madcap Avus,
with its ’bahn-storming straights and wall-of-death banking, the
no-expense-spared stromlinienwagen W196s of world champion
Juan Manuel Fangio, (designated winner) Karl Kling and Hans
Herrmann had been upstaged – harried, hounded, hustled – by
Behra’s underfunded, overstretched Gordini; until the little blue
machine, as it tended to, snapped under the strain.
That’s who and what Behra was. Those damned statistics – yes,
he never would win a world championship GP – don’t lie, but nor
do they tell the whole truth. After Fangio had brought their
brake-less Maserati 450S ‘Bazooka’ home victorious in the 1957
Sebring 12 Hours, he deflected adulation towards his grinning
co-driver. As did Moss, Fangio knew Behra’s worth – though he
thought him “perhaps too brave”, whereas Moss saw something
of himself in the Frenchman’s battling spirit. That Behra’s best
seasons were spent as a team-mate of these giants is telling.
In 1956, he shed a loose cannon reputation – often the lot of
a driver compensating for inferior equipment – via a consistent
campaign: second place in Argentina plus thirds in Monaco,
France, Great Britain and Germany saw him finish fourth in the
final standings; Maserati team-mate Moss was championship
runner-up to Fangio.
In 1957 he won five Formula 1 races – as did Fangio, on his way to
a fifth and final world title – but was scuppered by unreliability in
the championship rounds; not once did Behra qualify lower than
fifth and yet he notched only six points. He was leading the British
GP in style and with some comfort when his Maserati 250F
scattered shrapnel across Aintree. And why the Moroccan GP
wasn’t appended to a denuded world championship is a mystery:
Behra, apparently unaffected by the ’flu bug that sidelined Moss
and hampered Fangio, comprehensively beat the others. There was
good reason then to consider him the best of the rest.
Certainly BRM was delighted to sign him for 1958. His wins for
it during 1957, in Caen and at Silverstone’s BRDC International
Trophy, were small beer and yet absolutely huge for a team so
beleaguered. His joie de vivre raised its spirits, too. Sadly, it could
not raise its game. Behra limped from wreckage after brake failure
had caused him to crash from the lead of Goodwood’s Glover
Trophy in April. And a similar failure would cost him the lead of
the Monaco GP. Although he finished third – no match for the
Vanwalls around Zandvoort’s sandy swoops – in the Dutch GP,
a catalogue of problems caused a slew of retirements thereafter.
He was relieved, therefore, to sign with Ferrari for 1959. He was
living over the shop again: testing, testing, testing; coffee and a