1959-05-31 256 F1 (1) Jean Behra HOL - Zandvoort 5
The 1959 Dutch Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held at Zandvoort on 31 May. The race was held over 75 laps of the four kilometre circuit for a race distance of 314 kilometres. The race was won by Swedish driver Joakim Bonnier driving a BRM P25, to become the first Swedish driver to win a Formula One Grand Prix. Jean Behra with this Ferrari 256F1 (1) finished 5th.
Jean Marie Behra was a Formula One driver who raced for the Gordini, Maserati, BRM, Ferrari and Porsche teams. Behra was known for being hard-charging and temperamentalIn 1959 he moved to Ferrari where he partnered with Tony Brooks. Behra won a 200-mile (320 km) international race of Formula One cars at Aintree (no point for the F1 Championship), in April 1959. While still contracted to the Scuderia, he began development of a Formula Two car based on a Porsche 718 RSK. The team, known as Behra-Porsche, entered the 1959 Monaco Grand Prix with Maria Teresa de Filippis at the wheel but did not qualify. Despite the lack of initial success, Behra regarded the project as "tremendous fun" and was rewarded when Hans Herrmann drove the car to second in the prestigious Reims F2 race supporting that year's French Grand Prix. In so doing, Behra had beaten Scuderia Ferrari's own F2 entries, enraging Enzo Ferrari and doing little to ease tensions in an already strained relationship with the team. Things came to a head later that weekend, after he retired from the Grand Prix with a piston failure. Behra was involved in a strong discussion in a restaurant in which he punched team manager Romolo Tavoni and another patron, and was instantly dismissed from the team.
Less than a month later he crashed his Porsche RSK in rainy weather in the sports car race that preceded the German Grand Prix at AVUS, in Berlin, Germany.He was thrown from his car and fatally injured when he hit a flagpole, causing a skull fracture.
