Date 19 June 1960 Course length 14.12 km (8.774 mi) | Course Grand Prix Circuit | |
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Official name XXI GROTE PRIJS VAN BELGIE Location Spa-Francorchamps, Francorchamps, Belgium Distance 36 laps, 508.32 km (315.864 mi) | ||
The 1960 Belgian Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held at Spa-Francorchamps on 19 June 1960. It was the fifth race of the 1960 Formula One season. It is remembered as one of Formula One's darkest days due to the deaths of Chris Bristow and Alan Stacey and the serious accidents of Stirling Moss and Mike Taylor.
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Practice and race
Practice for the event saw Stirling Moss and Mike Taylor injured in separate accidents, Taylor suffering injuries which would end his racing career and Moss injured seriously enough to keep him out of racing for a number of months. In the race, Chris Bristow, driving a year-old Cooper for the British Racing Partnership, got off line at Malmedy, crashed into an embankment there four feet high and was hurled into some barbed wire which beheaded him, killing him instantly. Five laps later, Alan Stacey was hit in the face by a bird at Masta and crashed fatally. It would be the darkest weekend for the sport until the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.
The race distance had been lengthened to 36 laps from 24 laps. The results highlight an unusual quirk in the rules regarding classification of non-finishers. Under modern rules, Graham Hill would have been classified third, since he completed lap 35 before the lapped Olivier Gendebien. Hill then retired, in the pits, but was not classified since he did not push his car over the line after the winner took the finish (as required by the rules of the time). In fact the rule about crossing the finishing line was inconsistently applied – at the 1959 German Grand Prix, Harry Schell was classified seventh despite only completing 49 of the race's 60 laps.