Born on 4 May 1928 in Cologne, in the Rhine Province, von Trips was an aristocrat and count from a noble Rhineland family. He grew up in a Romantic-moated castle in Horrem, a district of Kerpen. The inheritance of the castle and the family's agricultural and fruit-growing possessions weighed heavily on the young von Trips. From 1951 onwards he struggled to train as a qualified farmer, but his true passion was racing.
Von Trips had diabetes during his career and kept high sugar snacks on hand during races to manage his blood sugar levels.
He made his Formula One debut at the 1956 Italian Grand Prix with Ferrari, failing to qualify. He made further appearances for Ferrari in 1957 at the Argentine, Monaco and Italian Grands Prix, scoring his maiden podium at the latter. He sustained a concussion when he spun off track at the Nürburgring during trial runs for a sports car race in May 1957, destroying his Ferrari. He made regular appearances with the team in 1958, taking another podium at the French Grand Prix. He was fifth at Porto in the 1958 Portuguese Grand Prix, which was won by Stirling Moss in a Vanwall. In July 1958 he retired from a Royal Automobile Club Grand Prix at Silverstone when his Ferrari came into the pits on the 60th lap with no oil.
Von Trips made two appearances for Porsche in 1959 before returning to Ferrari at the season-ending United States Grand Prix. He scored regular points finishes throughout his 1960 campaign, finishing seventh in the championship. In July 1960 he won a Formula Two event in Stuttgart — the Solitude Formula Two Grand Prix — in a Ferrari with a newly introduced rear engine, averaging 164.49 km/h (102.21 mph) over 229 km (142 mi) in a 20-lap race.
In 1961 von Trips secured his maiden Formula One victory at the Dutch Grand Prix and claimed a second win at the British Grand Prix. In May 1961 he won the Targa Florio, a ten-lap 721-kilometre race, with Olivier Gendebien of Belgium as co-driver, averaging 103.42 km/h (64.26 mph). At the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, von Trips and Phil Hill traded the lead; Hill led most of the way in front of a crowd of 100,000 people, with Ferraris capturing the first four places and von Trips finishing second. At that point in the championship Hill led with 19 points, followed by von Trips with 18.
In 1961 von Trips also established a go-kart race track in Kerpen. The track was later leased by Rolf Schumacher, whose sons Michael Schumacher and Ralf made their first laps there.
On 10 September 1961, the second lap of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, von Trips's Ferrari collided with Jim Clark's Lotus on the long straight before Parabolica. His car went airborne, crashed into a barrier, fatally threw him from the car, and killed fifteen spectators. Von Trips died before reaching the hospital. The toll of the accident remains the highest in the history of Formula One. As a result, the FIA banned Formula One from competing on circuits with steeply-banked corners.
Clark described the accident: "Von Trips and I were racing along the straightaway and were nearing one of the banked curves… At one point von Trips shifted sideways so that my front wheels collided with his back wheels. It was the fatal moment." However, movie footage that surfaced after the race showed Clark's memory to be inaccurate; after colliding with Clark, von Trips's car rode directly up an embankment on the outside of the track and struck a fence behind which spectators were closely packed. Clark and his car were subjected to a manslaughter investigation; the charges were subsequently dropped.
Von Trips had previously crashed at Monza in the 1956 Italian Grand Prix and the 1958 Italian Grand Prix, sustaining injuries on both occasions. At the time of his death he was leading the Formula One World Championship.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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