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Formula One deaths

Musso at the 1954 Italian Grand Prix, four years before his death © AP

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Who was the first driver to be killed during a world championship Grand Prix? asked Craig Townsend

The answer to this rather melancholy question is the Italian Luigi Musso, who died during the French GP in July 1958 after being thrown from his Ferrari following a crash at a hairpin on the frighteningly fast Reims circuit.

Less than a month later the British Driver Peter Collins - also in a Ferrari - was killed during the German GP at the Nurburgring, and to complete a melancholy season another British driver, Stuart Lewis-Evans, died of burns received in a crash in the final race of the year, the Moroccan GP in September.

In 1954 Onofre Marimon, from Argentina, had been killed during practice for the German GP at the Nurburgring, while no fewer than six Americans died at Indianapolis during the 1950s, when the Indy 500 counted towards the F1 title standings: the first of them was Chet Miller in 1953.

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