1962 British F1 Grand Prix Race Report & Results

Event: British Grand Prix
Track: Aintree Motor Racing Circuit

Weather: sunny, dry, warm

Jim Clark won his 2nd F1 World Championship race at the 1962 British Grand Prix. The Lotus-Climax driver started from pole position and won on the Aintree circuit for the 1st time. It was also his 2nd win of the season and the 7th win for the Lotus F1 team.

Aintree, the Lotus 25 confirmed

The British Grand Prix at Aintree on Saturday 21 July 1962 was the race that confirmed the Lotus 25 monocoque as the quickest car in Formula 1. Jim Clark put the works Lotus on pole position, led every lap of the 75-lap race and took the chequered flag with the kind of crushing margin that the chassis had threatened to deliver since its Zandvoort debut three months earlier. The home crowd was fully convinced that the next world champion was a Borders sheep farmer in green-and-yellow Lotus colours.

Practice settled the order with Clark on pole, John Surtees second on the grid in the Bowmaker-Yeoman Lola, Graham Hill third in the BRM and Bruce McLaren fourth in the Cooper. From the green flag Clark led from Surtees, with Hill and McLaren in the chase pack. The Lotus 25's lap-time advantage was the order of half a second; Clark gradually opened a buffer over Surtees and was never seriously challenged.

The closing laps

Surtees brought the Lola Mk4 home a strong second for the Huntingdon constructor's first ever F1 podium. The Bowmaker-Yeoman team had been running the Lola in only its first season and had now scored a second-place finish in a championship race; Eric Broadley's constructor business was on a firm footing.

McLaren took the Cooper-Climax into third, three Climax-engined British cars on the podium, the kind of result that announced the Surrey/Norfolk constructor industry as comprehensively dominant. Graham Hill brought the BRM home fourth, with Jack Brabham fifth in the new Brabham-Climax (the first ever F1 race for Brabham's own constructor team), and Tony Maggs sixth in the second Cooper.

Brabham's constructor debut

The grid included one historically significant new entry. Jack Brabham, the two-time world champion, had spent the 1962 season organising his own constructor entry, the Motor Racing Developments operation that became Brabham Racing Organisation. The Brabham BT3, designed by Ron Tauranac, made its world championship debut at Aintree with Brabham himself at the wheel. He retired with throttle linkage trouble after a quietly impressive run, but the team had announced its arrival. Brabham would win seven races as a Brabham constructor by the time he retired in 1970, including a Brabham championship in 1966 and a Brabham constructors' title in 1967.

Standings

Clark's nine points took him to 18 in the championship and into the lead. Graham Hill remained on 19 (with no points added at Aintree). McLaren was on 23, Surtees suddenly on 14 from his Lola podium. The 1962 championship was now genuinely four-way, with the Nürburgring three weeks away and Monza after that. Clark looked the form driver of the moment; Hill the more consistent points-scorer; the Lotus 25's reliability remained the open question.

Classification 1962 British F1 GP

Pos	#	Driver	Team	Time	Laps	Grid	Pts
1	20	Jim Clark	Team Lotus	2:26:20.800	75	1	9
2	24	John Surtees	Lola	2:27:10.000	75	2	6
3	16	Bruce McLaren	Cooper-Climax	2:28:05.600	75	4	4
4	12	Graham Hill	BRM	2:28:17.600	75	5	3
5	30	Jack Brabham	Team Lotus	+1 lap	74	9	2
6	18	Tony Maggs	Cooper-Climax	+1 lap	74	13	1
7	34	Masten Gregory	Team Lotus	+1 lap	74	14	0
8	22	Trevor Taylor	Team Lotus	+1 lap	74	10	0
9	8	Dan Gurney	Porsche	+2 laps	73	6	0
10	42	Jackie Lewis	Cooper-Climax	+3 laps	72	15	0
11	40	Tony Settember	Emeryson	+4 laps	71	19	0
12	36	Ian Burgess	Cooper-Climax	+4 laps	71	16	0
13	14	Richie Ginther	BRM	+5 laps	70	8	0
14	54	Carel Godin de Beaufort	Porsche	+6 laps	69	17	0
15	46	Jay Chamberlain	Team Lotus	+11 laps	64	20	0
16	32	Innes Ireland	Team Lotus	+14 laps	61	3	0
DNF	2	Phil Hill	Ferrari	engine	47	12	0
DNF	26	Roy Salvadori	Lola	battery	35	11	0
DNF	10	Jo Bonnier	Porsche	differential	27	7	0
DNF	44	Wolfgang Seidel	Team Lotus	Brakes	11	21	0
DNF	48	Tony Shelly	Team Lotus	Engine	6	18	0
DNS	48	Keith Greene	Team Lotus	Practice only - Shelly's car	0		0
WD	28	Maurice Trintignant	Team Lotus	Car damaged	0		0
WD	38	John Campbell-Jones	Emeryson	Driver unfit	0		0
WD	50	Keith Greene	Gilby	Car not ready	0		0
WD	52	Jo Siffert	Team Lotus	Insufficient starting money	0		0

Fastest lap: 1:55.000 min by Jim Clark (Team Lotus 25) in lap 36

✅ Check out 1962 F1 Championship Standings
✅ Check out 1962 F1 Teams & Drivers

✅ Check out All Time F1 Drivers Rankings
✅ Check out All Time F1 Driver Records
✅ Check out All Time F1 Teams Rankings

About the author

Leopold

Leopold Pleijsier founded F1-Fansite.com in 2001 and has followed Formula 1 since the early 1980s. He writes about daily F1 news, race weekends, drivers and the sport’s history.

Related topics