Racing | Formula 1 | 1968 British Grand Prix — Siffert Wins for Rob Walker at Brands Hatch

On Saturday, 20 July 1968, Jo Siffert lined up fourth for the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch in R.R.C. Walker Racing Team’s Lotus 49B, powered by the Ford-Cosworth DFV. Graham Hill and Jackie Oliver had put the works Lotus cars on the front row, but the final official classification records both as non-finishers.

Siffert brought car No. 22 through 80 laps in 2:01:20.300 and finished 4.4 seconds ahead of Chris Amon’s Ferrari; Jacky Ickx was third, one lap behind. Siffert also set the race’s fastest lap, 1:29.700 on lap 42, and the result became his first Formula 1 World Championship victory.

The win was also a landmark for Rob Walker’s independent team. Goodwood’s history of the surviving Lotus identifies it as Walker’s car and records Siffert’s Brands Hatch victory, while Motor Sport’s event record confirms the race date, venue, championship status, and 2.65-mile circuit.

This memory is pinned to the mapped start-and-finish line on the straight now called Brabham Straight, at 51.360306, 0.260333—not to a generic point within the property. The race used Brands Hatch’s 1960–1975 Grand Prix configuration, about 4.265 km (2.65 miles), rather than the present 3.916 km Grand Prix layout.

The cover is John Chapman’s diagram of the 1960–1975 Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit, created in 2018 to document that historical configuration; it is not a photograph from the race. It is reused under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0.

Sources: Formula 1 final result and fastest-lap archive, https://www.formula1.com/en/results/1968/races/261/great-britain/race-result and https://www.formula1.com/en/results/1968/races/261/great-britain/fastest-laps ; Motor Sport event record, https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/database/races/1968-british-grand-prix/ ; Goodwood history, https://media.goodwood.com/the-return-to-power/ ; exact start/finish coordinate reference, https://driver61.com/circuit-guide/brands-hatch-indy/ and OpenStreetMap way 25805012, https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/25805012 ; image and license, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brands_Hatch_1960-1975.svg .