A handful of World Championship F1 races have been held over the Holiday period. Here’s a look back at those few events, including the one which saw a new champion crowned
The winter of 1962-63 in the UK was so infamously harsh that it was given its own nickname: The Big Freeze. The three months of December 1962 and the following January and February remain the coldest since at least the 1800s and snow drifts in some areas were several metres deep – highly unusual for Britain.
Some snow had fallen earlier in December but it was the blizzards at the end of that month, overnight on December 29-30, which left the country under a freezing white blanket which, because it was so cold, did not melt away in some areas until the Spring.
Several of the UK’s finest-ever motorsport exports, though, were not around to see it fall. Despite it being just days after Christmas the likes of Jim Clark, John Surtees and Graham Hill were not even in the same hemisphere. They were in East London – but a long, long way from Dagenham.
East London is a far less globally-famous city on the south-east coast of South Africa, notable in the F1 world for being the site of the first World Championship South African Grand Prix. And there wasn’t a snowflake in sight.
But there was a World Championship to be decided for both the drivers and teams who had made the trip south for the season finale, including a one-on-one showdown between Brits Clark and Hill – both bidding to become champion for the first time.
Hill, the father of future title-winner Damon, had a nine-point lead over Clark heading into the race, in an era when victory was worth… exactly nine points. However, only each drivers’ top five results of the year counted, meaning a Clark victory would make him champion, despite Hill having scored more points overall.
Their rivalry was reflected in the battle for supremacy between their respective teams. Hill’s British Racing Motors (BRM) also had an overall points advantage over Clark’s Lotus team, but that early scoring system left both championships open for the taking.
And, for a long time, Hill and BRM would have been very nervous. In qualifying, the two title contenders were the only drivers to set a lap time below 90 seconds. Crucially, though, Clark snatched pole position by three-tenths, putting Hill in a position where he would have to overtake his fellow Brit to avoid being leapfrogged in the final standings.
December 29 was race day and, a few hours before those blizzards began to batter Britain, thousands of miles away it looked for all the world as if Jim Clark was about to become world champion for the first time. He kept the lead from pole position and looked set to take a comfortable one and title-deciding victory, until his Lotus sprang an oil leak.
Just 20 laps from the end of an 82-lap showpiece, and having built a lead of more than half-a-minute, the Scot was forced to retire from the race. Hill inherited the lead of the race, though it no longer mattered – he was going to be champion regardless. In the end, he did it in style by crossing the line almost 50 seconds clear of 1960 title-winner Bruce McLaren in second place.
Hill and BRM won the drivers’ and constructors’ titles respectively, each for the first time. It was a tough defeat for Clark, but he came back much stronger the following year and won both the South Africa race and, indeed, the title.
Sadly, both men would die far too young. Jim Clark might have won more than the two championships he managed had he not died in a crash at a Formula Two race at the Hockenheimring, Germany, in April 1968. He was 32. Graham Hill survived his racing career but was just 46 years old when, on November 29, 1975, the plane he was flying crashed while he was preparing to land at an airfield north of London. He was among six people killed, the others being senior members of his Embassy Hill team.
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