1955 RAC Tourist Trophy

The 1955 RAC Tourist Trophy took place on 17 September, on the roads around Dundrod, (County Antrim, Northern Ireland).

Their closest championship rivals, Jaguar, brought just one D-Type to Northern Ireland for Mike Hawthorn and Desmond Titterington.

The cars were to be driven by Juan Manuel Fangio and Karl Kling, Stirling Moss and John Fitch, and André Simon joined by team newcomer Wolfgang von Trips.

With works entries also from the likes of Aston Martin and Porsche, an incredible fifteen manufactures were represented in the field.

As there was an obvious threat of rain, this motivated the drivers to push a little harder at the beginning of the race than normal for a seven-hour event.

[10] With a lead of one and a half minutes, the right rear tyre on Moss's 300 SLR began to throw its tread and tore through the rear-end bodywork.

Incredibly, Moss managed to bring the car back to the pits, even with the damaged bodywork and shredded tyre.

Having lost a lot of time, Moss and his co-driver Fitch drove flat-out in an effort to catch up with Hawthorn, and with it a shot at the win.

[12] Once the repairs had been made to the number 10 300SLR, Moss and Fitch managed to bring the car up to second place overall behind the sole works Jaguar D-Type.

Although slowed by the damage and weather conditions, Moss and Fitch had been unable to close down the gap enough to be able to challenge for the lead.

As a result, car number 10 (Daimler-Benz AG), took an impressive victory, winning in a time of 7hrs 03:11 mins., averaging a speed of 88.321 mph.

Meanwhile, the Aston Martin DB3S of Peter Walker and Dennis Poore were the best of the English entrants, finishing in fourth place, with the best of the works-Maserati further behind in fifth.

[14][15][16] One of the outstanding drives of the race came from Peter Collins, whose Aston Martin DB3S was left stranded at the start due to a seized starter motor.