Willy Mairesse

Mairesse drove with a grim determination and frequently came unstuck, suffering a whole series of lurid accidents which burnt and battered his small frame but never dented his fearless approach.

He sprang to prominence in 1956 when he took his second-hand Mercedes 300SL to victory in the Liège-Rome-Liège Rally, beating the favourite, Olivier Gendebien, in the process, which sparked a bitter competition rivalry between the two Belgians. In 1957 Willy over-reached himself, wrecking a series of expensive cars, and he was lucky that Jacques Swaters rescued him from probable obscurity by furnishing him with a Ferrari Berlinetta for 1958 which he took to second place in the Reims 12 Hours. Mairesse clashed with Gendebien once more in the 1959 Tour de France, defeating his rival on a number of timed stages but missing out on overall victory. Ferrari took an interest in the little man, however, and offered him a drive in the 1960 Targa Florio. He finished fourth and was immediately taken into the works team for both F1 and sports cars. Late in the year he scored the first of two successive Tour de France victories in a Ferrari 250GT, but only after Gendebien of all people had helped to manhandle the Mairesse car from a ditch.

This gutsy display from Willy made him Ferrari’s blue-eyed boy of the moment and he was retained in the sports car team for 1961, taking a number of GT victories and second place at Le Mans with Parkes. After buying a couple of GP rides at Spa and Reims, Mairesse blew another Ferrari F1 chance by crashing at the Nürburgring, but another win in the Tour de France may have kept him employed in 1962, Willy accepting the role of test driver vacated by Ginther, who had moved to BRM.

The season started with wins in the Brussels and Naples GPs, before more success with victory in theTarga Florio. At the Belgian GP, though, Mairesse was involved in a lurid high-speed accident with Trevor Taylor, receiving burns which kept him out until a comeback at Monza which netted fourth place. He survived the Ferrari clear-out to partner Surtees in 1963, but his erratic performances culminated in a needless accident at the German GP when he wrote off the car and put himself out of racing for the remainder of the season. His Ferrari career finally at an end, Mairesse was still a more than useful sports car driver, and joined the Equipe Nationale Belge, winning the 1964 Angola GP in their Ferrari GTO and the Spa 500 Km in 1965. His last major win came the following year when he shared a Filipinetti Porsche Carrera with Herbert Müller to win the Targa Florio. His accident-prone career finally came to an end at the 1968 Le Mans 24 Hours when a door flew open on his Ford GT40, causing him to crash heavily, Mairesse suffering severe head injuries which left him unconscious for two weeks. He never fully recovered and after a year spent in poor health, and with no prospect of a return to racing, he committed suicide in an Ostend hotel room.