From the archives of Bob Montgomery, motoring historian
JEAN BEHRA: Jean Behra was not your typical racing driver - quiet, unassuming and modest, he began as a racing cyclist and then became a motorbike champion before turning his attention to motor racing.
That was in 1949, the year the great French champion Jean-Pierre Wimille died.
Behra began by driving some not very good cars, lacking the required finance for more exotic machinery.
His climb from obscurity was of necessity slow and it was not until 1952 when he drove a six-cylinder Gordini that he "arrived". In that year, Formula 2 was upgraded to become the new Formula 1 and Ascari was winning all around him to become world champion. Behra managed to snatch victory in the Rheims Grand Prix from the two Ferrari drivers - Ascari and Farina - and overnight became a hero throughout France. But despite this success, Behra's Gordini was an "also ran" rather than a contender for victory, most of the time.
Despite pushing hard to the limit of his ability Behra rarely crashed but at the infamous 1955 Dundrod Tourist Trophy race near Belfast he crashed his Maserati, thereafter wearing a plastic artificial ear.
With the demise of the Gordini Grand Prix team, Jean Behra drove for Maserati, BRM, Porsche and finally Ferrari. For BRM he won the Daily Express Trophy and the Caen Grand Prix; for Porsche he won the F2 race at Reims and also at Rouen while for Ferrari he took victory in the BARC 200 at the Aintree track.
By now his talent was widely recognised and his smooth style appreciated by most of the team managers.
Maserati paired him in sports cars with Musso, Moss and Taruffi and he won the Sebring 12 hours with Fangio, while at the 1959 Le Mans he set fastest lap at 125 mph.
Dark, and small of build, Behra spoke little and smiled a lot. He enjoyed his motor racing and in his ten years in Grand Prix and sports car racing he won nineteen times - a record which would have been better but for his allegiance to the BRM which let him down no less than nine times.
In sports car racing he placed third at Le Mans and second in the Targa Florio driving Porsche on both occasions.
1959 looked set to be his best season ever. Now a Ferrari Formula 1 driver, he won at Aintree and was second at Syracuse and in the Ferrari Sports Car was second at Sebring and third at the Nurburgring.
On August 1st he travelled to the very fast Avus track at Berlin for a sports car race.
Avus was a quite extraordinary track - up and down both sides of a motorway with a u-turn at one end and a steeply banked turn at the other - the north curve. Speeds reached there were very fast and the race was intended to be a prelude to the German Grand Prix which was to be held there later that year.
Behra drove his own Porsche and his car was seen to fly over the top of the banking on the north curve. Jean Behra, universally loved by the motor racing community, died instantly in the crash, just ten years after France's other great post war champion, Jean-Pierre Wimille.