The mid engine revolution

Mike Hawthorn in his Ferrari in the 1958 Argentine Grand Prix.

Although the basic formula remained unchanged in 1958, races were shortened from around 500 km/300miles to 300 km/200 miles and cars had to use Avgas instead of various fuel mixtures using methanol as the primary component.

With Fangio retired, Mike Hawthorn in a Ferrari took the 1958 driver's championship – becoming the first English driver to earn a title. The British Vanwall team took the maiden constructors championship that season, but ruined their driver's championship aspirations by taking points off one another. Stirling Moss, despite having many more wins than Hawthorn, lost the title by one point. This season saw a woman driving in Formula One for the first time with Maria Teresa de Filippis racing a private Maserati at the Belgian Grand Prix^[5].

1958 was a watershed in another crucial way for Formula One. Against a small field of Ferraris and Maseratis (BRM and Vanwall were still working to convert their engines to Avgas), Stirling Moss won the Argentine Grand Prix driving a mid-engined Cooper entered by the private team of Rob Walker, and powered by a 2 litre Coventry-Climax Straight-4. This was the first victory for a car with the engine mounted behind the driver in Formula One.^[6] The next Grand Prix in Monaco was also won by that Cooper, this time driven by Maurice Trintignant and facing a more substantial opposition. Powered by undersized engines, the Coopers remained outsiders in 1958 but as soon as the new 2.5 litre Coventry-Climax engine was available, the little British cars went on to dominate Formula One. The 1959 season saw fierce competition between the works Cooper of Australian Jack Brabham and Moss in the Walker team's Cooper. As the use of a modified Citroën Traction Avant transaxle was Achilles heel of the Coopers, Walker switched to a home design. Unfortunately the special transmission turned out to be more unreliable that the standard part and Brabham took the title with Moss second.

For 1960 while Enzo Ferrari adopted a conservative attitude, claiming "the horses pull the car rather than push it",^[7] Lotus and BRM introduced mid-engined machines. Walker's team switched to a Lotus 18 chassis. Moss gave Lotus its first Formula One victory at Monaco but his season was ruined by a crash and Brabham took a second title with his Cooper.

The mid-engined revolution rendered another potentially revolutionary car obsolete. The front-engined four-wheel drive Ferguson P99 raced in British Formula One races in 1961, winning the non-Championship Oulton Park International Gold Cup,^[8] but was too heavy and complex compared to the new breed of mid-engined machines.

In 1961, in an attempt to curb speeds, Formula One was downgraded to 1.5 litre, non-supercharged engines (essentially the then-current Formula Two rules), a formula which would remain for the next five years. Ferrari could have used its already proven V6 powered mid-engined Formula 2 cars, but preferred to go one step beyond by designing a very sophisticated car powered by a 120° V6. This led to Ferrari dominance for the 1961 season as the British teams scrambled to come up with a suitable engine.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Formula One World Championship was merely the tip of the iceberg when it came to races run to Formula One regulations. The total number of races run to Formula One regulations remained about the same as it had been before the introduction of the World Championship. Many famous races, such as the Pau and Syracuse Grands Prix, the BRDC International Trophy, the Race of Champions and the Oulton Park Gold Cup, were not part of the World Championship, but nonetheless continued to draw the top drivers and teams to compete.