The Glover Trophy: Goodwood’s illustrious Formula 1 contest

It begins with the 500cc era

The Glover Trophy was first presented as the prize for the 500 International Trophy, a race for 500cc Formula 3 cars held during the 1950 Whit-Saturday race meeting at Goodwood. The race was promoted as the biggest F3 race in Europe, at a time when the category was beginning to evolve into a globally recognised formula of racing.

F3 was officially adopted by the FIA that year, and featured tube-frame cars powered by 500cc motorcycle engines. They were small, lightweight, and considered the perfect entry for up-and-coming drivers to test their mettle in single-seater motorsport.

Prize money for the race was provided by D.M. Glover of United Lubricants Ltd., amounting to a total packet of £500, including £200 for the overall winner. It was a huge amount of money compared to anything else offered to F3 racers at that time, and it had the desired effect. A total of 40 cars were accepted to enter the event along with eight reserves, and Goodwood hosted teams from overseas for the first time.

After two heats, the best 20 finishers — minus a non-starting David Clark in a Cooper-JAP — returned for the first 500 International Trophy Final, which saw a race-long battle for the lead between Peter Collins and ‘Curly’ Dryden, both driving Cooper Norton IIIs. It was Dryden who prevailed by just 0.6 seconds to become the first winner of the Glover Trophy, claiming the top prize which in today’s money amounted to almost £6,000.

Mr Glover was so pleased with the exposure gained by putting his name on Goodwood’s F3 trophy that it was retained for two further years of the 500 International Trophy in 1951 and ’52.

The Formula Libre years

Formula 1 was still in its infancy during the early 1950s, and few manufacturers had the funds to produce cars capable of competing. The World Championship of Drivers was dominated by Maserati, Ferrari and Mercedes, which left a host of British teams that had fallen by the wayside since the early days of Grand Prix racing to compete in a series of non-Championship Formula Libre events.

One of which, the Richmond Trophy, was hosted at Goodwood for the first time in 1953, and became the new contest for the Glover Trophy in place of the 500 International.

Formula Libre, translated as ‘Free Formula’, was a category of motorsport that encouraged all comers to compete. It grew in popularity during the 1950s in parallel to F1, as cars which no longer met the latter’s prescriptive regulations continued to be rolled out onto the world’s race tracks.

The open nature of Formula Libre made for wonderfully eclectic grids that nurtured unlikely contests you wouldn’t see in officially sanctioned Championship events. Goodwood’s Richmond Trophy featured an 18-car strong entry list with names including Roy Salvadori, Stirling Moss, Piero Taruffi and Tony Rolt. Engine capacities stretched from the 1.5-litre BRM Type 15s to the 4.5-litre Thinwall Special Ferrari 375, although several cars, including Moss’ Cooper, didn’t make the start.

It was the BRMs who set the pace, their roaring V16 engines stifling the sound of those behind as Ken Wharton won from pole position at an average speed of 90.47mph. He retained the Glover Trophy a year later, albeit in more controversial circumstances after a collision with Salvadori two laps from the end sent tempers soaring. Salvadori’s team protested but the result was ultimately upheld. The BRM, however, came away from Goodwood in a state beyond repair, and was retired after this final triumph.

The Glover Trophy joins the F1 schedule

After the 1952 and ’53 seasons saw the World Championship and vast majority of non-Championship races run to Formula 2 regulations, F1 regained its World Championship status in 1954, and returned to a long list of other races over the next two years.

Goodwood had been hosting F1 races since its inaugural meeting back in 1948, but the Glover Trophy was first awarded as a prize for motorsport’s premier category in 1955 at that year’s Easter Meeting.

There was still a shortage of F1 machinery at that stage, so the field was limited to British privateers running Connaughts and Coopers, although there were two of the far more successful Maserati 250Fs lined up on the front row of the grid.

Roy Salvadori was driving for the Gilby Engineering outfit, and Stirling Moss had entered his own car for the event. The pair led comfortably at the front, but a spin for Salvadori saw him drop to sixth place, and he spent the next two laps carving his way back up into second. Moss in the lead was suffering with a mechanical problem and ceded to Salvadori on the twelfth lap before eventually retiring. That left Salvadori to claim the victory and lift the Glover Trophy for what would be his first and only time.

That race in 1955 was also the stage for a young Jack Brabham to put on a show in his Cooper T24 before running out of fuel with four laps to go. F1 racing had been something of a low-key affair at Goodwood up to this point, but it was about to make this little Motor Circuit a household name.

The Richmond Formula 1 Race, as it was known, was held on two further occasions, with Moss claiming a second successive victory for the 250F over a 32-lap distance, and Stuart Lewis-Evans winning in 1957 driving a Connaught B-Type. During this time, the list of World Championship drivers making the trip to West Sussex was lengthening year on year. The likes of Mike Hawthorn and Tony Brooks had become regular entries, but this was but a taster of what was to come.

Goodwood becomes a major motorsport venue

By 1958, there were only five non-Championship F1 races. The Glover Trophy was one of them, making Goodwood one of just 15 circuits in the world to host the premier tier of motorsport.

The truncated schedule meant the Glover Trophy no longer clashed with other F1 events, and so the world’s leading teams and drivers were inclined to compete. Goodwood’s 1958 Easter Meeting on 7^th April was the scene of a major sporting event, which marked the beginning of the European F1 campaign following January’s Argentine Grand Prix.

Stirling Moss had won that season’s opening race and claimed pole position for the Glover Trophy, leading a star-studded grid at the wheel of a Rob Walker Racing Cooper T43. Scuderia Ferrari had come to Goodwood for the first time with a lone 246 Dino peddled by Mike Hawthorn, BRM had brought its full contingent to challenge for victory, as had Cooper and Team Lotus, while a pair of Connaughts had been entered by a Mr. Bernie Charles Ecclestone.

Only Vanwall, with whom Moss was racing in the World Championship, and Maserati were missing from the full-time F1 field, which made this the most competitive Glover Trophy race to date.

Moss stalled at the start and immediately dropped back as Jean Behra’s BRM led Jack Brabham in a Cooper and Hawthorn into Madgwick for the first time. Moss was down to eighth by the end of the first lap, but recovered quickly to fifth as Behra suffered a catastrophic brake failure into the chicane which caused major damage. Moss continued to battle back to the front and was challenging Hawthorn for the lead when his engine expired on lap 22. The pair had been lapping at an average of 97mph, and the relentless pace had proven too much for the Cooper’s Climax engine.

Hawthorn was left alone for the remainder of the race, running home a comfortable 39 seconds ahead of Brabham after 42 laps. Ferrari never returned to Goodwood to race in F1, and retained a 100 per cent winning record in the Glover Trophy. Roy Salvadori completed the podium places, with Cliff Allison fourth for Lotus. A young Graham Hill, contesting the race for the first time, suffered a mechanical failure in his Lotus after just two laps.

Hawthorn would win only once more in 1958 on his way to becoming the World Champion before his tragic death the following January.

British engineering comes to the fore

After Ferrari’s success in 1958, Cooper’s rear-engined revolution began in earnest in 1959. The new T51 won eight races across the season to claim a first Manufacturers’ Championship, and among those victories was a second Glover Trophy triumph for Stirling Moss, who once again proved his superiority around the Goodwood Motor Circuit in his Rob Walker Cooper.

Moss was embroiled in an early battle with the BRMs of Harry Schell and Jo Bonnier, and the Cooper of Jack Brabham, but he squeezed into the lead at St. Mary’s on lap ten and proceeded to pull away at more than a second per lap as Brabham struggled to hang on to his coat tails. Moss eventually took the chequered flag in front of some 40,000 spectators to win by more than 16 seconds.

The dominance of British manufacturers continued in subsequent years, but Cooper was set to be joined at the front of the grid by Colin Chapman’s Team Lotus. The Cooper T51 still had the performance advantage in 1960, and Jack Brabham drove to another World Championship, but he enjoyed little such success in that year’s non-Championship races. Brabham’s Cooper was withdrawn from the 1960 Glover Trophy ahead of the race, but Bruce McLaren in the other works T51 was still expected to go strongly.

However, Lotus had completed development of its own rear-engined car, and the Lotus 18 was immediately competitive around Goodwood’s high-speed layout. Innes Ireland qualified behind the Coopers of Chris Bristow, Stirling Moss and Harry Schell, and kept pace with the leading group during the opening laps to climb to second place. Ireland made history on lap three as he became the first driver to complete a lap at more than 100mph. He took the lead from Moss during a blistering 101.17mph tour, and the pair continued to race at an extraordinary pace for the duration. Ireland managed to hold on, though, to claim the first F1 victory for Lotus. Both he and Moss had breached the 100mph threshold and they were presented with a new award, the Goodwood Ton, in the aftermath.

The F1 schedule was greatly expanded for 1961, and a clash with the Pau Grand Prix stifled the Glover Trophy’s entry list, but Cooper, Lotus and BRM were all still in attendance to put on a quality show for those in attendance at Goodwood. The trimmed down grid was supplemented by several plucky privateers who came to try their luck against the very best, Keith Greene with his Gilby Type B was of particular interest. John Surtees made his F1 debut at the Motor Circuit and duly took victory ahead of Graham Hill, who was drawing ever nearer to finally getting his hands on the Glover Trophy, while Roy Salvadori, Stirling Moss, and Innes Ireland were once again in attendance. Down in Pau meanwhile, Jim Clark claimed his first F1 victory at the head of a field dominated by Cooper and Lotus cars.

Stirling’s career comes to an end

The Glover Trophy’s storied history was tarnished in 1962, as it proved to be the final race in Stirling Moss’s professional racing career. Moss had been offered the choice to race at Pau or Goodwood, and his preference was to compete in front of his home crowd.

Driving a car painted in the pale green of his own UDT Laystall Racing Team (which also ran Lotus 18s for Innes Ireland and Masten Gregory), Moss was once again on pole position, although he dropped to third at the start behind Bruce McLaren’s Cooper and Graham Hill’s BRM. His car was seemingly running poorly, and he pulled into the pits with a gearbox complaint. After a lap stationary, Moss returned to the track and immediately broke the lap record, eventually catching back up to the leaders to unlap himself.

Following Hill on the approach to St. Mary’s, Moss went off the circuit at high speed and ploughed into the banking on the outside. He suffered severe injuries including bruising on the brain which put him in a coma for a month and ultimately cost him his career. Hill went on to claim his first ever F1 victory and finally lift the Glover Trophy, but his celebrations were muted in the aftermath of such a serious accident. It was regardless the perfect start to the year for Hill, and he would go on to become the 1962 World Champion.

The Glover Trophy race was run for a final time in 1963, and it was Innes Ireland who once again claimed the victory, this time driving a Lotus 24 to see off the close attention of Bruce McLaren’s Cooper T66.

Thus, it was the end of an era, and although F1 remained a part of Goodwood’s annual schedule, the Glover Trophy would not be awarded again, until it was resurrected in 1998 at the inaugural Goodwood Revival. Its history will be continued in 2025, when 1.5-litre F1 cars from 1961-1965 return to the Goodwood Motor Circuit to enthral us all as they once did more than 60 years ago.

Tickets for the Goodwood Revival are limited! Saturday tickets have sold out, so secure your Friday and Sunday tickets to avoid missing out on the world's best historic motorsport event.

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