WHEN F1 RACED FOR NIL POINTS
Stirling Moss got it right – as usual. “Those non-championship races were just as important as the world championship grands prix,” he said. “The BRDC International Trophy was in actual fact more important than the British GP because more prize money was at stake. That’s why it usually got a fantastic entry. The world championship can spoil things because drivers spend more time trying to win it than actually trying to win the individual races. That, to me, is wrong. For me, the most important race is always today’s. Today I could win, lose, or get killed. What could be more important than that?”
Racing for the hell of it, for the moment – and for money. That was the foundation upon which the sport of motor racing was formed. But even by 1965, when John Webb founded the Race of Champions as the Brands Hatch alternative to Silverstone’s long-established BRDC International Trophy, Formula 1 was changing. The world championship wasn’t yet the be-all – but within two decades it would be.
Britain had more than its fair share of ‘pointless’ F1 races, including the Oulton Park International Gold Cup that started in 1954 (an event won by Moss), but the Brands Hatch and Silverstone races were the biggest, often acting as curtain-raisers to the European F1 season.
Through the 1960s and 1970s, as non-championship races dwindled, the two spring staples of UK motor racing rumbled on, vying for attention, prize money and quality grids bolstered by Formula 5000 cars and later Aurora
