The son of a wealthy farmer and businessman, Tony Maggs was part of Ken Tyrrell's Formula Junior, Cooper-BMC team in 1961 and shared the European Championship with Jo Siffert.

[2] He was invited into the Cooper Formula One team for 1962–1963, finishing second in the French Grand Prix both years, but was dropped at the end of 1963.

[3][4] Maggs then moved to Scuderia Centro Sud for 1964 and despite the fact that their BRM P57s were not current machinery achieved two points finishes out of three race starts.

[2] He also returned to Formula Two with an MRP Lola and with David Piper won the Kyalami 9 Hours race in the latter's Ferrari GTO.

[2] However, in a national race at Pietermaritzburg he crashed his Brabham and a young spectator standing in a restricted area was hit and killed.