Bristow was born in Lambeth, London, and took up motor racing as a teenager. He quickly earned the reputation of the "wild man of British club racing" — aggressive to the point of controversy, but with the natural speed to back it up. His car control attracted serious attention, and Ken Gregory — the manager who guided Stirling Moss — reportedly called him the "early Schumacher" of his day and believed he would have become a potential world champion. Moss himself offered a different but equally telling comparison, placing Bristow closer to the level of Jean Alesi "if as quick."
His Formula 2 results demonstrated his pace against established competition. At Brands Hatch in 1959 he won an F2 race outright, beating Jack Brabham and Roy Salvadori. That same year he finished third at the prestigious Oulton Park Gold Cup, behind Moss and Brabham — a result that confirmed his standing against the best in British racing.
Bristow raced for the Yeoman Credit Racing Team in a Cooper T51 and started four Formula One World Championship Grands Prix over the course of his career. He scored no championship points.
His 1960 season showed clear signs of maturation and genuine front-running pace. At the Glover Trophy at Goodwood he qualified from pole position. At Monaco, he recorded a joint-third qualifying time and was placed on the fourth grid row before retiring on lap 17 with gearbox failure. At the Dutch Grand Prix he out-qualified his team-mates, starting seventh, but retired early with an engine problem.
The 1960 season was already marked by death before Bristow reached Belgium. Harry Schell had been killed during practice at Silverstone ahead of the Monaco round, and the atmosphere within the small Formula 1 community was subdued.
On 19 June 1960, during the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, Bristow was killed on lap 20 at the Burnenville corner — an extended, fast right-hander on this high-speed public-road circuit through the Ardennes. While fighting ahead of Willy Mairesse's Ferrari, Bristow's Cooper struck an embankment and rolled. He was thrown into a barbed-wire fence at the edge of the track and was decapitated. He was 22 years old and died at the scene.
Alan Stacey also crashed fatally at the same circuit during the same race, reportedly after being struck in the face by a bird at speed. The 1960 Belgian Grand Prix remains one of the most devastating single events in Formula 1 history. Jim Clark, who witnessed the accidents, developed a permanent aversion to Spa as a result.
A friend, speaking after Bristow's death, reflected: "We all knew this was going to happen. It does no good to say now, but Chris simply did not have the experience to drive that way in Grand Prix racing."
Bristow became the youngest driver ever to die in a Formula One World Championship race — a record that, given the improvement in circuit safety over subsequent decades, is unlikely ever to be broken.
Within British motor racing, his memory is preserved through the Chris Bristow Trophy, awarded annually alongside the Autosport BRDC Award recognising the most promising young British racing driver of the year. The trophy connects his name to each new generation of British talent — a generation he never had the opportunity to join.
His four World Championship starts represent only a fragment of what contemporaries believed he was capable of. The qualifying results at Monaco — joint third on the grid — and the consistent club-level victories against established names illustrated a driver who, had he survived the Belgian Grand Prix, would likely have been a significant presence in Formula 1 through the early 1960s.