The championship still comprised five qualifying rounds, but what rounds they were; the 1000 kmBuenos Aires the 12 Hours of Sebring, the Targa Florio, the Nürburgring 1000 km, with the 24 Hours of Le Mans being the final round. With reigning champion, Aston Martin works cars not returning to defend their title, this left the door wide open for Scuderia Ferrari to reclaim the title. This wasn’t to be plain sailing as the nearest rivals turned out to be the smaller Porsches. The Italian manufacturer started stronger with Phil Hill and Cliff Allison taking the spoils in Argentina. Next was the annual trip to Florida, for the 12 Hours of Sebring, however the factoryFerrari and Porsche were not present because of the rule change by the FIA, allowing the organisers to permit use of only certain brands of fuel, As a result, the race was between privateers with works-backed drivers, with Porsche coming outon top. The mid-way point of the championship, saw the cars return to Europe for the Targa Florio. The twisty mountains roads of Sicily favoured the more agile car, like the Porsche which duly took the victory. The championship then into moved into West Germany, the annual trip to the Nürburgring Nordschleife. To the surprise of everyone, the spoils went to an American team, Camoradi/USA Racing Team, whose Maserati was driven by Stirling Moss and Dan Gurney. This result meant, going into the final round, the only way Ferrari could stop Porsche winning the title was to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and that was exactly what they did.
Season results
Results
Championship
Note:
Only the top five positions are included in this set of standings.
Championship points were awarded for the first six places in each race in the order of 8-6-4-3-2-1.
Manufacturers were awarded points only for their highest finishing car with no points awarded for positions filled by additional cars.
Only the best 3 results out of the 5 races could be retained by each manufacturer. Points earned but not counted towards the championship totals are listed within brackets in the above table.
Pos
Manufacturer
Rd 1
Rd 2
Rd 3
Rd 4
Rd 5
Total
1†
Ferrari
8
6
8
22
2
Porsche
8
8
6
22
3
Maserati
3
8
11
4
Aston Martin
4
4
† - Ferrari declared the champion from tie breaker of more points having two 3rd-place finishes to Porsche's one.
The cars
The following models contributed to the netchampionship point scores of their respective manufacturers.
Ferrari
Porsche
Aston Martin