The 1959 Portuguese Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held at Monsanto on 23 August 1959. It was race 7 of 9 in the 1959 World Championship of Drivers and race 6 of 8 in the 1959 International Cup for Formula One Constructors. The race was held over 62 laps of the five kilometre circuit for a total race distance of 337 kilometres.The race was won by British driver Stirling Moss, driving a Cooper T51 for privateer race team Rob Walker Racing Team, ahead of American racer Masten Gregory driving a similar Cooper T51 for the factory Cooper Car Company team. American Scuderia Ferrari driver Dan Gurney finished third in this Ferrari Dino 246, one of the last Ferrari with back engine.Ferrari, and his Formula One career began with the team in 1959. In just four races that first year, he earned two podium finishes, but the team's strict management style did not suit him.

Daniel Sexton Gurney was an American racing driver, race car constructor, and team owner who reached racing's highest levels starting in 1958. Gurney won races in the Formula One, Indy Car, NASCAR, Can-Am, and Trans-Am Series. Gurney is the first of three drivers to have won races in sports cars (1958), Formula One (1962), NASCAR (1963), and Indy cars (1967), the other two being Mario Andretti and Juan Pablo Montoya.In 1967, after winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans together with A. J. Foyt, Gurney spontaneously sprayed champagne while celebrating on the podium, which thereafter became a custom at many motorsports events. As owner of All American Racers, he was the first to put a simple right-angle extension on the upper trailing edge of the rear wing. This device, called a Gurney flap, increases downforce and, if well designed, imposes only a relatively small increase in aerodynamic drag. At the 1968 German Grand Prix, he became the first driver ever to use a full face helmet in Grand Prix racing.

In 1960 he had six non-finishes in seven races behind the wheel of a factory-prepared BRM. At the Dutch Grand Prix, at Zandvoort, a brake system failure on the BRM caused the most serious accident of his career, breaking his arm, killing a young spectator and instilling in him a longstanding distrust of engineers. The accident also caused him to make a change in his driving style that later paid dividends: his tendency to use his brakes more sparingly than his rivals meant that they lasted longer, especially in endurance races. Gurney was known to give the brake pedal a reassuring tap just before hard application — a habit he himself jokingly referred to as "the chicken-shit school of braking

Gurney's tall height, unusual for a race driver, caused constant problems during his career. During the 1.5-litre era of Formula 1, Gurney's head and shoulders extended high into the windstream compared to his shorter competitors, giving him (he felt) an aerodynamic disadvantage in the tiny, underpowered cars. At nearly 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m),[citation needed] Gurney struggled to fit into the tight Ford GT40 cockpit, so master fabricator Phil Remington installed a roof bubble over the driver's seat to allow space for Gurney's helmet—now known as a "Gurney bubble". In a fortunate error, the Italian coachbuilder who built the body for the 1964 Le Mans class-winning, closed-cockpit Cobra Daytona GT coupe driven by Gurney and Bob Bondurant mistakenly made the cockpit "greenhouse" two inches too tall — the only thing that permitted Gurney to fit in the car comfortably.Upon his retirement from Formula One, Gurney devoted himself full-time to his role as car maker and team owner with great sucess.

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