When Stirling Moss led from the front.
IN a fortnight in which Formula One teams are flaunting their new designs and technical quirks, it is interesting to look back to when Stirling Moss made racing history, outdriving the field in the rain to win the non-championship Formula One Gold Cup at Oulton Park in 1961 in the revolutionary four-wheel drive Ferguson P99.
It was the first and only Formula One race won by a four wheel drive car and also the last Formula One race won by a car with the engine in the front.
Irish tractor millionaire, Harry Ferguson, championed the cause of four-wheel drive and his research and development company built a Formula One car to demonstrate the advantages of all-wheel traction but it was too late. Front-engined cars had been superseded.
The previous two world titles in 1959 and 1960 had been won by rear-engined Coopers, so the Moss victory in the Ferguson was a hiccup in history, but history nevertheless.
The car had three differentials: front, rear and a mid located differential that would lock if either the front wheels or the back outsped each other. Moss was fascinated by the Ferguson.
‘”It was completely different to driving a rear-engined car, and obviously the fact that all four wheels were driven and that there was power as well as cornering load being applied to the front wheels, asked the driver questions which initially perhaps he could not answer very intelligently.
Rob Walker had entered the Ferguson car for Moss at OuIton Park and he entered it again in the 1963 New Zealand series, fitted with a 2.5-Iitre four-cylinder Coventry-Climax engine.
Graham Hill. who was then the new world champion suffered clutch failure on the second lap of the New Zealand Grand Prix but soldiered on to within a lap of the finish before the transmission failed. Hill, exhausted and unaccustomed to the heat from the front-mounted engine, said it had been like racing a stove.
Innes Ireland raced the Ferguson to third place at Levin and at Teretonga, but the car expired with severe overheating on the Wigram airfield circuit. Every gauge that wasn’t reading 212 degrees was reading zero.” reported Ireland, also severely overheated.
The gallant old Ferguson is now on display at the Donington Collection.
EOIN YOUNG
Note: The Donington Collection has now closed.
“P99 is no longer housed at the Ferguson Family Museum on the Isle of Wight but is currently with the Rolt family. The museum still houses memorabilia, photographs. drawings and books etc. of the car’s history.” (Note on Ferguson Family Museum website June 2022)
