Friday 10th September 2021
The black hour of Formula 1
Heartbreaker killed 15 people
Sixty years ago, one of the worst motorsport accidents of all time shocked Formula 1: Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips, the first German to ever win an F1 race, crashed his Ferrari into a crowd in Monza. Trips is thrown out of the cockpit like a lifeless doll.
He was a heartthrob par excellence, a son from a good family with perfect manners, aristocratic offspring, farmer, bon vivant and one of the best Formula 1 drivers of his time: on September 10, 1961 in Monza, Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips flew on the way to the World Cup -Title just before the infamous Parabolica to its death.
On that fateful day 60 years ago, his raging Ferrari dragged 15 people into perdition. 60 more are injured. Trips took off the gas on the approach to Parabolica, Jim Clark, who was driving behind him, can no longer react, his Lotus touches the left rear tire of Trips’ car.
The Ferrari with the starting number 4 lifts off to the left like a jet, flings up the embankment, grabs the people behind the fence, rolls over several times and crashes back onto the asphalt. Destructive forces tear the driver out of the cockpit, a lifeless doll that remains lying in the inferno with a shattered neck. Wolfgang Alexander Reichsgraf Berghe von Trips is long dead when the rescue workers arrive. He dies exactly five years to the day after the legendary Enzo Ferrari brought him to Maranello. The crash is called the “black hour of Formula 1” to this day.
“In death is life”
Trips was extremely popular in the scene, he was open, friendly, always fair. But he was also a thug, a racing driver through and through, who spared his opponent, but not his own car and himself, that’s why they called him “Count Crash”. Enzo Ferrari even pulled him out of circulation for a few months, and Countess Tessa von Trips asked her only son in an open letter in the “Welt am Sonntag” to finally stop this nonsensical racing sport. Vain.
When Wolfgang von Trips was buried in the family crypt at Hemmersbach Castle on September 14, 1961, Kerpen was bursting at the seams. Mourners from all over the world have come to the small community to say goodbye. “Not goodbye, just goodnight – Francesca” reads one of the many obituaries that appear in newspapers around the world.
In December 1961, the stooped parents Eduard and Tessa von Trips posthumously accepted the award for their son as Sportsman of the Year. “In Morte Vita” is written under the coat of arms of the von Trips. In death is life.
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