When the F1 title-decider was the last lap of the last race | Thank Frankel it’s Friday

The first was Jim Clark. At the start of the race he seemed least likely to take the title, not least because he was 11 points behind the championship leader and you only got nine for a win. However, back then the rules said only your best six results counted and the leader has already scored in seven, Clark just four. So Jimmy could keep every point he scored while Graham Hill, said leader, would have to drop at least two even if he won. Which, if Clark won would tie them on points but make the Scot champion at the expense of the Englishman on account of having won a greater number of races that year.

So Jimmy had to win and it never looked for a moment like he would not. Pole position was followed by fastest lap was followed by leading from the flag until the 64^th lap. Unfortunately for his, this was a 65 lap race; and with yards to go his hard pressed Climax V8 seized solid. And that was the end of that.

Which meant Graham Hill would be champion and probably rightly so. He and his BRM team had shown the best blend of speed and reliability throughout the season and he was seven points ahead of Ferrari’s John Surtees in the title chase meaning that Big John’s chances depended first on Graham scoring no points at all, and then him either winning or coming second. But in the early stages of the race, it was the BRM leading the Ferrari. Until, that is, Surtees’ team-mate Lorenzo Bandini took exception to being overtaken by Hill and decided to repass him at the hairpin.

It wasn’t a dirty or dangerous move, but it was quite ambitious and with Hill in no mood to concede, the two cars touched, spinning the BRM off the circuit where a gentle impact did nothing more than flatten its exhausts. But that was enough for Graham’s car to need attention in the pits and while he would re-join, he was and would remain out of the points and so, for these purposes, out of the race too. But not out of the championship. Even so, just remember that while all this was going on Jimmy was sailing away at the front so from that point of view, what happened elsewhere was of no consequence, because if Jimmy won, Jimmy was champion.

But as we know Jimmy didn’t win. He didn’t even finish. And when he retired, that made Graham champion because Surtees needed to come second and right now as the final miles flowed under the wheels of his scarlet Ferrari, he lay third. Out front sat Dan Gurney in his Brabham having had a comparatively quiet race and the second place car was too far ahead of Surtees for him even to contemplate a last ditch dive for glory, let alone pull it off. There had been more than enough drama for one race as it was and if things could just stay as they were for a few more minutes, he’d have his second title in three seasons.

Unfortunately for Hill, that second placed driver was none other than Bandini. Ferrari’s Bandini. Surtees’s team-mate Bandini. And – would you believe the poor bloke’s luck? – suddenly on that last lap his Ferrari’s gorgeous flat 12 motor started to lose power. Or at least that what it looked like from the outside as Surtees steamed up and swept past to take the title from Hill with the single additional point the resulting second place provided.

Of course there were suggestions of a stitch up, that in first taking out Hill and then slowing on the last lap Bandini had done all he could to make sure the championship went to a Ferrari driver. Big John was adamant that Bandini really did have problems, but I think it’s fair to say that few others saw it that way.

Whatever the truth of it, John Surtees added a four wheeled World Championship to those he’d already won on two, making him the first, most recent and in my view likely to be the only person ever to pull off this most extraordinary of feats.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.