Circuits 19 circuits in 13 countries, from forest roads to airfields

The circuits of his first four seasons, when he raced British cars and then his own Maserati. Lengths are those of a lap in his day.

A lap of 7.28 km (4.52 miles) through the woods north-west of Bern, quick corner after quick corner with hardly a straight of any length, and trees that overhung the road. He had raced there in Formula Two for HWM in 1950. His first championship race was there, in the rain in 1951, and he was 8th in a 2-⁠litre HWM-Alta among the Alfa Romeos. In 1952 HWM withdrew his car; in 1954, fastest in a soaking practice that counted for nothing, he started 3rd and retired. After the Le Mans disaster of 1955 Switzerland banned circuit racing, and Bremgarten never held another championship race.

The Belgian road course of 1921 ran 14.12 km (8.77 miles), from La Source down to Malmedy, along the Masta straight with its kink, and round through Stavelot. He started six championship races there and won none, though he was 3rd in 1954 in his own Maserati 250F, for his first championship points, 2nd to Fangio in 1955, and 3rd again in 1956 after losing a wheel, running back to the pits and taking over a team-⁠mate’s car. In 1958 he led away on the first lap, missed a gear accelerating out of Stavelot and over-revved his engine. In practice in 1960 he crashed at Burnenville and was badly hurt. The circuit was shortened in 1979, now measures 7.004 km and still holds the Belgian Grand Prix.

A former RAF airfield, with a lap of 4.711 km (2.93 miles) in his day. He raced at its very first meeting, in October 1948, on the day of the RAC’s Grand Prix there, and won there often outside the championship: the International Trophy in a Vanwall in 1956 and in a Cooper in 1961, the British Empire Trophy in 1961, and sports-car races in 1951, 1952 and 1958. In four championship races he took two poles and two fastest laps and finished none: an engine in 1952, the rear axle when 2nd in 1954, the gearbox after leading in 1956, the engine again in 1958. His British wins came at Aintree. Silverstone, now 5.891 km, still holds the British Grand Prix.

Built after the war on roads the German army had left behind the dunes, with its Tarzan corner and the dunes themselves for grandstands; 4.193 km (2.61 miles). He won a 500cc race there in 1949, and in seven championship races took a win, in the Vanwall in 1958, a pole and three fastest laps. In 1955 he was 2nd, close behind Fangio; in 1960 a piece of kerb thrown up by Brabham’s Cooper punctured a tyre, and he came back to 4th; in 1961 he took 4th from Richie Ginther on the last lap by a tenth of a second. The circuit was shortened in 1989, lengthened in 1999 and banked for its return in 2021. The Dutch Grand Prix of 23 August 2026 was expected to be the last there for some years.

The circuit in the royal park opened on 28 August 1922. In his years it was the 6.3 km (3.91-mile) road circuit, the 10 km (6.21-mile) road course with the bumpy concrete banking, or a 5.75 km (3.57-mile) road course again. He started nine championship races there and won three: in 1956 in a Maserati after Luigi Piotti pushed him, out of fuel, to the pits; in 1957 in the Vanwall; in 1959 in Walker’s Cooper, without a tyre stop. In 1954 he had been leading with 12 laps left when an oil pipe cracked. In 1958 his Maserati-based Eldorado Special broke its steering on the banking in the Race of Two Worlds and hit the barrier, by Motor Sport’s estimate at 150 mph (241 km/⁠h). The banking is disused now, and the road circuit, with chicanes, measures 5.793 km.

A triangle of public roads outside Reims, so fast that races there were decided in the slipstream, run by “Toto” Roche; 8.302 km (5.16 miles) for most of his years. He won there outside the championship: the sports-car race of 1952 in a disc-braked Jaguar C-⁠type, the 12 Hours of 1953 with Peter Whitehead, and the Formula Two race of 1959. In five championship races he was 2nd once, to Hawthorn in 1958, in Fangio’s last race. In 1959, in the great heat, he spun his BRM on melted tar at Thillois and was disqualified for taking help to restart. The circuit closed in the early 1970s; its pits and grandstands still stand beside the road.

Opened in 1927 in the Eifel hills, the Nordschleife ran 22.81 km (14.17 miles) through 176 corners, by Motor Sport’s count, between hedges, ditches and trees. In six championship races he won once, his last championship win, on rain tyres in Walker’s Lotus in 1961; in 1958 he had led and set the fastest lap before the magneto failed. He won the 1000 km there four times, in 1956, 1958, 1959 and 1960, and the race of 1959, in which he won back the lead for Aston Martin in a DBR1 after his co-driver, Jack Fairman, had gone off, stayed with him. He told Nigel Roebuck:

By the lap-by-lap account in Denis Jenkinson’s report of the race, he drove 38 of its 44 laps, not 41. No Grand Prix has been held on the Nordschleife since 1976, but it is still raced, and a modern circuit stands at the old start.

Streets in the western suburbs of Barcelona made an unusually fast town circuit of 6.316 km (3.92 miles). He raced there once, in the Spanish Grand Prix of October 1954, in the latest works Maserati, and passed Fangio before an oil pump failed. It held two championship races in all and closed after 1955; the streets are streets again.

From his first race for Mercedes-⁠Benz to his last for Rob Walker: the championship went to Argentina, Portugal, Morocco and the United States, and to circuits it would use once.

Opened on 9 March 1952 as the Autódromo 17 de Octubre and renamed after the coup of 1955, with a dozen possible layouts; the Grand Prix used one of 3.912 km (2.43 miles). In five championship races he won once, in Walker’s 2-⁠litre Cooper T43 in January 1958, the first championship win for a rear-engined car. He took pole and set the fastest lap there in 1957 and again in 1960 and won neither race. He also won the Buenos Aires 1000 km of 1956 in a Maserati 300S. The circuit is now the Autódromo Oscar y Juan Gálvez, and held its last championship race in 1998.

The round-the-houses circuit of 1929, 3.145 km (1.95 miles) in his day. He won a 500cc race there in 1950, and his three championship wins each came in a different situation: a works Maserati in 1956, Walker’s week-old Lotus in 1960, and in 1961 an underpowered four-cylinder Lotus against the new V6 Ferraris, the race he thought probably his best. He did not find it easy. In 1955, Jenkinson found, he could not take the tunnel flat where Fangio could, as 1955 tells. In 1957 he crashed at the chicane on lap 4, and the crash also put out Collins and Hawthorn. The circuit, now 3.337 km, has Ste Dévote, a swimming-pool section on reclaimed land and a hotel over the tunnel; it still holds the Monaco Grand Prix.

Mirabel Topham, who ran the racecourse, had the circuit built in three months for £100,000 round the Grand National course: 4.828 km (3 miles), flat but for Melling Crossing, with room for up to 140,000 spectators. Its two international meetings of 1954 were both won by Moss. In 1955 he beat Fangio there by 0.2 seconds to become the first British winner of the British Grand Prix; in 1957 the Vanwall he shared with Tony Brooks won, the first British car to win a championship race. Of the first of those wins he wrote in 1998: “I’ve never really known whether he let me take that home win.” In 1959 he was 2nd, in a BRM; in 1961 his Lotus’s brakes failed and he took over the Ferguson P99, which had been disqualified while Jack Fairman drove it, and raced on until it was called in. The Grand Prix circuit was last used for an international race in 1964; sprints and track days use it still.

About 25.6 km (16 miles) of public road, by the databases’ measure, through villages and over level crossings: the longest circuit the championship has used.¹ He first raced there in 1954, in the Circuito di Pescara, and retired. In 1957 he led from the 2nd lap in the Vanwall, stopped on lap 13 for oil and a glass of water, and beat Fangio by more than 3 minutes, with a fastest lap of 9:44.6 that equalled Fangio’s pole time. The roads went back to their traffic; the last racing there was for sports cars, in 1961.

A true street circuit, of a kind already rare: tram-lines and cobbles, kerbs, drains and lamp-posts, a climb up the Avenida da Boavista and a fast, smooth, winding descent, with a fish-drying factory at the end of the lap; about 7.4 km (4.6 miles). He won the Portuguese Grand Prix there in 1958 from pole by more than 5 minutes, and that night gave the stewards the evidence that kept Hawthorn’s 2nd place. In 1960 he was disqualified there himself, for restarting downhill the wrong way after a stall. The circuit was closed after 1960; a shorter course was used for historic cars from 2005, until street racing ended there in 2015.

Laid out in six weeks on public roads outside Casablanca, along the coast road and a highway through a forest, for a race in 1957 when the Suez crisis threatened racing in Europe; 7.618 km (4.73 miles). The championship came once, for the decider of 1958. Moss won and set the fastest lap, all he could do, but Hawthorn was 2nd and champion by a point. Stuart Lewis-Evans, his Vanwall team-⁠mate, was badly burned when his engine failed, and died six days later. There is no circuit there now.

Two long straights in Berlin, joined by a hairpin at one end and at the other by the North Curve, banked at 43 degrees and surfaced in brick; about 8.3 km (5.2 miles). The German Grand Prix of 1959, its only championship race, was run in two heats, and Moss’s transmission failed on the second lap of the first. Jean Behra had been killed there the day before, in the sports-car race. The North Curve was dismantled in 1967, and the circuit closed in May 1998.

Roads through the park on the hills above Lisbon, 5.44 km (3.38 miles), mostly good tarmac with a stretch of concrete dual carriageway and some cobbles, and blind, tree-lined corners. He had raced sports cars there, 2nd in a Jaguar C-⁠type in 1953 and a class winner in a Porsche in 1955. In the Portuguese Grand Prix of 1959, in Walker’s Cooper, he took pole, led every lap, set the fastest lap and lapped the whole field. It was the last year of the full circuit.

The concrete runways of a wartime airfield where B-⁠17 crews had trained, 8.36 km (5.19 miles), home of the 12 Hours, which he won in 1954 with Bill Lloyd in an OSCA. The championship came once, in December 1959, for the title decider: Moss took pole and led by 10 seconds until his gearbox failed on the fifth lap, and Brabham was champion. The 12 Hours is still run there.

A desert circuit in southern California, below the San Bernardino Mountains, with a climbing run of esses; 5.271 km (3.28 miles). Its only championship race, the United States Grand Prix of November 1960, was the last of the 2½-litre formula. Ferrari did not come, Brabham was already champion, and Moss won from pole by 38 seconds from Innes Ireland. The circuit closed in 1989, and a shopping centre and houses stand where the esses were.

A permanent circuit on a hilltop, opened in 1956; about 3.8 km (2.3 miles) in 1961. He had won Formula Libre races there in 1959 and 1960. On 8 October 1961, in his last World Championship race, he fought Brabham for the lead and led until his engine failed after 58 laps, and Ireland gave Team Lotus its first championship win. The Glen held the United States Grand Prix 20 times, until 1980.