Cooper T43: Formula 1’s groundbreaking rear-engined winner

Throughout the 1950s, F1 cars had utilised a front-engined configuration, the horse pulls the carriage after all, and that was simply the way racing cars had been made for the best part of half a century. By slotting the Coventry Climax engine into the middle of the car, however, Cooper had given the T43 a substantially improved weight distribution compared to its competitors.

The result was better amplitude into the corners and lots more traction out of them than the staple front-engined design of the time. That performance gain was amplified by the introduction of a larger 2.0-litre FPF engine, which delivered enough power to at least give the diminutive Cooper a chance of competing with its more powerful 2.5-litre rivals.

It was a design that caught the eye of Moss, who was at that point considered one of the best racing drivers in the world. The T43 had been seen in action on five occasions in 1957, achieving a best finish of fifth with Roy Salvadori at Aintree, while the Rob Walker Racing Team, which was at that time a relatively unknown commodity, had run the car twice with Jack Brabham, retiring on both occasions.

By the time the 1958 season rolled around, however, it was Moss behind the wheel of the only T43 entered at the opening round in Argentina in sweltering conditions. The temperature played into the Rob Walker Racing Team's hands; track temperatures competing with the sun for surface heat meant the race was reduced from 400 to 313km, or 80 laps, allowing Moss to toy with the idea of going the full distance without submitting his lightweight Cooper to a very time-consuming tyre change.

Any plans for instant dominance went straight out the window. World Champion Juan Manuel Fangio put his Maserati 250F on pole ahead of the Ferrari 246 S of Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins. Moss, who'd qualified wearing an eye patch after his wife accidentally poked him in the eye, took seventh place, but that didn't put a spanner in the works for his planned marathon finish.

With the race underway, Jean Behra led before Hawthorn caught him, with Fangio passing both to lead on lap ten. But this was a race of endurance, not a sprint, and only at the halfway stage did their rivals realise the Rob Walker Racing Team's plan, the T43 continuing to post steady lap times as the others pitted.

Moss wasn't having everything his way, though. His car was jammed in second gear during the race's early stages until a stone miraculously lodged itself in the transmission's interlocking device, releasing all the gears.

The tyres would also need a miracle. They were only rated for 40 laps, and the rears were wearing heavily as the race passed the halfway stage. The team took its mind off those issues by playing mind games with its opponents, deploying the old dummy tactic and hauling out fresh tyres in preparation for a ‘pit stop’, only to wheel them back into the garage to leave the mechanics in neighbouring garages disappointed.

The competition's realisation of the no-stop plan came too late. Try as they might to catch the T43, its superior balance allowed it to eke every last bit of performance from its tyres, taking Moss to victory 2.7 seconds ahead of Luigi Musso's pursuing Ferrari.

The Argentinian Grand Prix in 1958 was perhaps the most significant race in F1 history. It was the first race win for a rear-engined car, the first win for a car entered by a privateer and the first for a car powered by a supplier-built engine. It was also a sign of things to come, as Jack Brabham would drive his rear-engined Cooper T51 to the World Championship in 1959, signalling the end of the line for front-engined cars in Grand Prix racing.

The T43 won again at the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix in the hands of Maurice Trintignant, but it was soon replaced by the T45, which placed the engine lower down into the chassis with new suspension and another innovation: disk brakes.

Cooper continued to champion rear-engined cars until the rest of the F1 field eventually caught up. Word was spreading stateside, too, with a Cooper T54 finishing ninth in that year’s Indianapolis 500.Jim Clark would eventually win that race in 1965, claiming the first rear-engined victory at Indy with the Lotus 38, setting a trend that has continued to this day.

And that's where the T43's legacy lies. As the first rear-engined Grand Prix winner, it set the tone for modern Formula 1 cars as we know them today.

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