Mike Hawthorn - The original British F1 champion

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50 years ago on 22 January 1959, Mike Hawthorn was found alive, but dying, in the backseat of his crumpled Mark 1 Jaguar. How and why Britain's first Formula One world champion came to be there at just 30 years of age is still a controversy.

Some say the hand throttle on his modified 3.4-litre Jaguar saloon stuck open, causing him to crash. Others reckon Hawthorn was testing new, but flawed, wet weather tyres for Dunlop.

Gallery 1: Great British champions

We know he was racing though. And not at Le Mans or the Nurburgring, but on the A3 just outside Guildford in Surrey. Charging home from London, Hawthorn spotted a pal - F1 team owner Rob Walker - at the wheel of a stunning Mercedes-Benz 300SL. He urged his Jaguar alongside the Benz at more than 100mph, offering a provocative wave as he passed. Neither man could resist the tantalising temptation of a street race, so they tangled, pushing their luxury sports cars hard to keep up with one another. Jaguar of Britain versus Mercedes of Germany.

Gallery 2: Great British champions

The road, for the most part flat and straight, tightened and narrowed as it reached the Guildford by-pass, winding down hill and sprawling out into the Surrey countryside. Shaded by trees, the asphalt was still moist from the morning's rain. Hawthorn tucked his Jaguar over for a tightening right-hand sweeper. The outside rear wheel clipped the wet grass, breaking traction. Hawthorn lost it. The Jaguar spun at what was later reported to be a three-figure velocity. It collided with a traffic island before continuing its fatal pirouette into the nearest tree.

This was 1959. Hawthorn died on the way to hospital, just months after becoming a national hero - he had been crowned Britain's first F1 world champion late in 1958.

Mike Hawthorn was the 'Golden Boy' of British motorsport, named so because of his famous blonde locks. With 'nothing more to prove' he had banked his 1958 world title, fame and fortune and retired from F1 to run a garage in Farnham. Just a year later, solemn-faced fans would come to pay tribute to him, laying hundreds of wreaths at the place where the Golden Boy's luck had run out.

Just months before, they had witnessed a title battle that enthralled the nation and ignited Britain's love affair with Formula One. Hawthorn beat Stirling Moss to the F1 world title by a single point during a fabulous season of tight racing.

The legendary Fangio had retired the year before and it was all change at top-level motorsport. Fellow Brit Moss did all he could to take the title for himself but in spite of winning the final race in Casablanca, Hawthorn's second place was enough to pip his countryman to the title.

It was Hawthorn's most famous moment and Britain thought its own Fangio had arrived. But it wasn't to be; Hawthorn had had enough. He'd been racing at the top since 1952, mainly for Jaguar, where he was the number one driver for four years (watch the great footage of Hawthorn driving his 1956 Jaguar D Type at Le Mans below).

That Le Mans film came a year after Hawthorn won the famous 24-hour race in controversial circumstances. In 1955 the event was marred by tragedy after 81 spectators were killed when a Mercedes flipped into a crash barrier and exploded. The public feeling in Germany was so strong that Mercedes withdrew from the race - despite being in a good position to win it. Hawthorn refused to withdraw the Jaguar and duly won causing ructions in the motorsport world.

Hawthorn's dislike of Germans was well documented; World War II was only recent history and he had lost friends and family during the conflict. No kraut can out-accelerate my Jaguar, he's quoted as saying in his biography. The chances of him throwing away Le Mans at the request of Mercedes-Benz were practically non-existent, whatever the circumstances.

Old documentary footage shows the fatal 1955 Le Mans crash here. You'll notice the chaos and complete lack of safety in measures in particular.

It was a different age, with none of the modern technology F1 benefits from today. All in, you can understand why Hawthorn chose to call time on his risky six-year career as soon as he had the F1 title. Better to be asked why you retired than when you'll retire, he joked with reporters.

Gentlemen drivers like Hawthorn and his mates lived the high-life in the paddock, never knowing if one of them would be killed the next race. Mike was well known for his love of parties, wine and women. While Lewis Hamilton gets the Pussy Cat Dolls today, Hawthorn fraternised with Vogue pin-ups of the fifties. In fact he was planning to marry a 21-year-old model the year he died.

Half a century on and Lewis Hamilton follows in Hawthorn's footsteps to also win the title by one point and become the youngest champion. The difference is that Hamilton is the ninth Brit to win the title - the largest number of champions produced by a single nation. And it all started with Mike Hawthorn.

As it turned out, when Hawthorn died in that A3 crash, he had been diagnosed with an incurable kidney disease. Doctors had privately given him 18 months to live at most. So perhaps he went the best way he could and 50 years later we can say that Mike Hawthorn died doing what he loved - driving fast and racing as a British world champion.

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