1955 World Sportscar Championship
racing tournament
The 1955 World Sportscar Championship season was the third season of FIA World Sportscar Championship motor racing. It featured a series of six endurance races for sportscars, contested from 23 January to 16 October 1955.
The championship was won by Mercedes-Benz, the German manufacturer ending the dominance of Ferrari which had won both of the previous World Sportscar Championship titles.
Season summary
The 1955 World Sports Car Championship was eventually contested over a six race series, even though seven were planned, of which two were cancelled. With legendary races such as the Mille Miglia and the RAC Tourist Trophy now part of an international race calendar, they were accompanied by the 24 Hours of Le Mans and 12 Hours of Sebring. The championship started in January, with a trip to Argentina for the 1955 1000 km Buenos Aires and ended with an event new to the championship, the legendary road race, the 1955 Targa Florio. As a result of the Le Mans disaster, both the 1000 km Nürburgring and the Carrera Panamericana were cancelled. The Nürburgring hosted a 500km race anyway, limited to 1500cc cars. Many Porsche 550 were entered, and even two East German EMW R3/55, with Edgar Barth among the drivers.
The Championship was open for manufacturers, with works teams such as Scuderia Ferrari, Officine Alfieri Maserati, Daimler-Benz and Jaguar Cars leading the way, but the majority of the fields were made up of amateur or gentlemen drivers, often up against professional racing drivers with experience in Formula One.
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This entry incorporates text from “1955 World Sportscar Championship” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.