French GP, 1960

Three weeks after the disastrous Belgian GP the World Championship contenders gathered at Reims. Stirling Moss was out of action. Tony Brooks had switched from the BRP Cooper team to try the new Vanwall VW11, while Team Lotus had hired Ron Flockhart to replace Alan Stacey. BRP had two new drivers in Henry Taylor and Bruce Halford. In practice both Scarabs blew their engines so neither Lance Reventlow nor Chuck Daigh was able to race.

Jack Brabham was on pole position by 1.4secs with Phil Hill's Ferrari and Graham Hill's BRM sharing the front row. Behind them were Innes Ireland's factory Lotus 18 and the Ferrari of Willy Mairesse.

At the start G Hill was caught unprepared and as he tried to get the BRM off the line he was hit from behind by the Scuderia Centro Sud Cooper of Maurice Trintignant. There was also a collision between Brooks and Lucien Bianchi's outdated Cooper.

The battle for the lead involved Brabham and P. Hill and the pair switched places lap after lap until Hill began to fade with transmission trouble. A similar problem took out third-placed Ferrari driver Wolfgang Von Trips and so Brabham was left out in front all by himself. Mairesse too retired with a similar problem and Ireland had to stop with a broken front suspension. Also retiring were the two surviving BRMS of Dan Gurney and Jo Bonnier disappeared with engine trouble.

This left Gendebien in the BRP Cooper to take second with Bruce McLaren third in the second factory Cooper and with Taylor finishing fourth in his BRP Cooper the company could boast 1-2-3-4 finish. The Lotuses of Jim Clark and Flockhart finished fifth and sixth.