F1 Championships: Runners-Up of the 1950s Quiz

Answer: Juan Manuel Fangio

The first F1 world championship event was the British Grand Prix held at Silverstone on May 13th, 1950. It was won by the Italian driver Giuseppe "Nino" Farina, who went on to become the first F1 world champion. The runner-up in this inaugural championship was one of Farina's Alfa Romeo team-mates, Juan Manuel Fangio, who had retired from the first race following an oil leak, but came back to equal Farina's total of three race wins by taking victories in Monaco, Belgium and France.

Despite losing out on his first attempt, Fangio went on to win a total of five F1 drivers' titles, winning 24 of his 51 race starts along the way - a record that places him amongst the greatest drivers to ever take part in the sport.

Answer: Alberto Ascari

The Ferrari team and their Italian driver Alberto Ascari proved to be the up-and-coming combination in F1 during 1951, after the previous season had been dominated by Alfa Romeo. Ascari had two second places in the first part of the season, but took advantage of the team's growing competitiveness against the Alfa Romeos to win the German and Italian Grands Prix, and was only two points behind eventual champion Juan Manuel Fangio going into the last race in Spain.

He qualified on pole position and led the race, but a poor tyre choice by Ferrari meant he had to make multiple pit-stops and he eventually finished fourth, while Fangio won the race to confirm Ascari in the runners-up spot.

Despite this set-back, Ferrari and Ascari went on to take back-to-back championship titles in 1952 and 1953.

Answer: Giuseppe Farina

Nino Farina - the 1950 world champion - was the ultimate runner-up in 1952, having not only finished second in the world championship, but also taken second place at the Belgian, French, German and Dutch Grands Prix. Those four second places netted him a championship points total of 24, but the winner, Alberto Ascari, had an almost unbeatable total of 36 points from four wins and four fastest laps (he also won another two races, but his points from these were disallowed due to a rule that allowed only a driver's four best scores to count towards their championship total).

The one-two-three in the championship were all Italian and all of them drove for the Italian team Ferrari.

Answer: Juan Manuel Fangio

The four Argentinians fielded by the Maserati team in 1953 were the 1951 world champion Juan Manuel Fangio (eight races), along with Onofre Marimón (six races), José Froilán González (five races) and Oscar Gálvez (one race). Fangio had a difficult start to the season after retiring from the first three races (excluding the Indianapolis 500, which he didn't enter), but came back with three second-places and a shared fourth-place finish, before winning the final race of the season in Italy. This victory proved to be a prelude to his success in the following seasons, as he went on to win four back-to-back titles between 1954 and 1957.

The concept of shared finishes may be an odd one for fans of the sport who aren't old enough to remember the very earliest years of the world championship - basically, team-mates were free to swap cars and both drivers would then share any points scored by that car. At the 1953 Swiss Grand Prix, Fangio swapped cars with his team-mate, Felice Bonetto, after 12 laps; Bonetto and Fangio's original car finished fourth, while Fangio's race was ended by engine failure a few laps after the swap. However, Fangio gained half a point for his contribution to the fourth-place finish and Bonetto got the other half.

Answer: José Froilán González

José Froilán González drove for Ferrari in 1954 and finished as runner-up in the championship to his illustrious fellow-Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio. This year is notable for being the first time that a driver managed to win the world championship having swapped teams mid-season. Fangio started the season with Maserati as a stop-gap measure until the Mercedes team joined F1 at the French Grand Prix, the fourth race of the season. Taking the runners-up position in 1954 also proved to be the high-point of González's F1 career as he never made the step up to world champion and only took part in a handful of races after this 'success'. He only won two F1 races, the 1951 and 1954 British Grand Prix, the former of which was notable as also being the Ferrari team's first F1 victory.

His odd points total came about because seven drivers were all credited with the fastest lap at the British Grand Prix (the timing system wasn't as accurate back then) and all received one-seventh of the single point on offer for it. González also had 1.5 points for a shared fourth-place finish discounted from his championship total, so overall he actually scored a total of 26 and nine-fourteenths of a point!

Answer: Stirling Moss

1955 proved to be one of the most dangerous and tragic years in the history of motor racing. The 24 Hours of Le Mans race in June was marred by an enormous accident that killed Mercedes driver Pierre Levegh along with 83 spectators, and injured many others. As a result, several countries introduced immediate bans on motor racing that led to the cancellation of the scheduled French, German, Swiss and Spanish F1 Grands Prix. In the end, the F1 season consisted of just seven races and Juan Manuel Fangio, who had been leading the championship prior to the cancellations, was crowned champion after July's British Grand Prix. That race was won by the championship runner-up, Stirling Moss, who became the first British winner of the British Grand Prix in the process.

Both Fangio and Moss were left to look for a new team for the 1956 season as Mercedes withdrew from all motor racing at the end of 1955 as a direct result of their involvement in the Le Mans tragedy. Mercedes didn't return to F1 as a constructor for over 50 years.

Answer: Stirling Moss

In 1956, Juan Manuel Fangio won the F1 drivers' world championship and Stirling Moss was the runner-up - the same result as the previous season. However, instead of being Mercedes team-mates, Fangio drove for Ferrari and Moss was with the Maserati team.

It was also a much closer competition than 1955 as Fangio won it by just three points (30-27). However, Moss wasn't actually in contention for the title, as he went into the final race of the season at Monza in fourth place in the championship, 11 points behind Fangio, with just nine points available (eight for the win and one for fastest lap). Moss scored the maximum points available and overtook both his team-mate, Jean Behra, and Fangio's team-mate, Peter Collins, in the final standings.

Answer: Stirling Moss

Moss completed a hat-trick of runner-up finishes in 1957, and once again he missed out on the title to Juan Manuel Fangio. They both started the season at Maserati, but Fangio's arrival at the team forced Moss to look for another drive and he then spent the rest of the season with British team Vanwall. Moss also missed the French Grand Prix due to illness and Fangio took full advantage of this by winning the race (along with three others during the course of the season). Moss came back to win three of the last four races - one of which was shared with Tony Brooks - but this wasn't enough to do much more than consolidate his hold on the runners-up spot.

Answer: Stirling Moss

When Juan Manuel Fangio retired from F1 in 1958 (he only took part in two of the 11 races), Stirling Moss probably though that the title would be his for the taking after three consecutive years as the runner-up. He duly won four grands prix - more than any other driver - but a string of reliability problems with his Vanwall meant he only finished five races in total. In contrast, his British rival, Mike Hawthorn, only won one race (the French Grand Prix), but took six second-place finishes, which put him one point ahead of Moss at the end of the season. Moss was left with the somewhat undesirable record of four consecutive runner-up finishes and the description of "the greatest driver to never win the World Championship".

While he might not have been an F1 champion, Moss did show impeccable sporting behaviour when he spoke out against Hawthorn's disqualification from the Portuguese Grand Prix and was credited with getting the Ferrari driver reinstated. If he hadn't done that then he would have been world champion.

Answer: Tony Brooks

During the 1959 F1 season, the top three drivers in the world championship all won two races and took one second-place finish. However, the world champion, Jack Brabham (Cooper), also stood on the third step of the podium a couple of times; the runner-up, Tony Brooks (Ferrari), had one third-place finish; and the third-placed driver, Stirling Moss (Rob Walker Racing), just had a bunch of retirements and a disqualification. Brooks' third-place finish came at the final race of the season - the US Grand Prix held at the Sebring International Raceway in Florida - and allowed him to leapfrog Moss in the standings.

1959 was Brooks' most successful year in the sport. The "racing dentist" retired in 1961, having won no further races in his final two seasons.