The fact that two Grand Prix were held in Morocco on the Ain-Diab circuit at Casablanca in 1957 and 1958 seems to have been largely forgotten.

This is surprising, because the first race was interesting enough in that it was Maserati’s last Grand Prix victory – by a 250F driven by Jean Behra, but this pales to nothing when compared with the 1958 race, an event of huge historical significance and almost unbearable poignancy.

Tony Vandervell was the millionaire owner of Vandervell Products, who made many of the world's automotive engine bearings. He had run his own racing team since 1949, his first car being a Tipo 125 Ferrari - a 1½ litre single-stage supercharged Formula 1 car.

This was a short-wheelbase, swing-axle car of extremely dubious handling. Vandervell had the car inspected in the tool room of Vandervell Products and was less than impressed by its standards of design and construction. He told Enzo Ferrari so, a practice he repeated regularly throughout their association.

Far from apologising, or telling him to get lost (he needed Vandervell bearings), Ferrari responded by telling Vandervell that what he really needed was the latest chassis and a two-stage supercharged engine, Vandervell responded by ordering a complete new car! Ultimately, Vandervell’s Ferraris developed into the 4½ litre un-supercharged “Thin Wall Special”, the most powerful and quickest example of the tipo (which today rests in the Donington Collection).

In 1952 Grand Prix were run to Formula 2 regulations for which Vandervell built his own car, determined to beat “those bloody red cars”. He commissioned work from the two leading stars of the rapidly-evolving British motor racing industry, first John Cooper and later Colin Chapman. Vanwall’s first win GP win was a fairy-tale victory at the 1957 British GP at Aintree by Stirling Moss, in a car taken over from Tony Brooks (later a Ferrari driver).

In 1958 Vanwall ran a three car team of Moss, Brooks and a young ex-F3 driver, Stuart Lewis-Evans. They fought a season-long battle with Ferrari 246 Dinos, driven initially by Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins and Luigi Musso. Musso was killed in the French GP and Collins in the German. Wolfgang von Trips, Oliver Gendebien and Phil Hill also drove for the Scuderia.

The 1958 Moroccan GP was the final round of the World Championship. Vanwall had won five Grand Epreuves and Ferrari two. Hawthorn was in the lead of the Drivers’ Championship by dint of better lesser-placings. Moss had to win with Hawthorn finishing lower than second to take the title. Whoever won would be the first Englishman to win the World Championship.

Moss was no Ferrari lover; he considered he had been insulted when attending a test in 1952. He was trying a car for size and a mechanic told him to get out of it, thus starting a rift which was to last for 10 years. Moss’s career stalled and was only kick-started when he ran his own Maserati in 1954, which lead to his joining the Mercedes-Benz team the following year.

Hawthorn got the 1953 Ferrari drive, leaving to drive for Vanwall in 1955. It was too early and he was disgusted with the reliability of the car and was released from his contract, later re-joining Ferrari.

So, not only were the two rivals racing for the championship, neither had the warmest feelings for the other’s team.

The scene was set for a classic race. Moss did all that was required of him, leading from start to finish, but so too did Hawthorn, his second place securing the Drivers’ title by one point.

Vanwall won the Constructors’ Championship and Tony Vandervell had realised his life’s dream. Yet he was distraught, for on lap 42 the engine of Lewis-Evans’s Vanwall seized, the rear wheels locked and he ran off the track into trees which ruptured the fuel tank, the car caught fire and he was terribly burned. He died six days later in hospital in England.

Vandervell never got over the loss, his health broke down and he effectively retired the team from Grand Prix racing, making only token appearances in 1959 and 1960. He died in 1967.

Tragically, Hawthorn was dead within months of his triumph. Sickened by the loss of Musso, Collins and Lewis-Evans, he retired at the season-end. He was killed when his Jaguar saloon crashed on the Guildford bypass early in 1959.

Whilst the two heavyweights had been slugging it out, the light and nimble mid-engined Coopers had also been winning races. The arrival of the Coventry Climax 2½ litre FPF engine effectively saw the end for front-engined cars and the arrival of the modern era. The next successful GP Ferrari would be mid-engined, the 156 “Sharknose” of 1961. Their only effective opposition? Stirling Moss in Rob Walker’s private Lotus 18.

We might bemoan the predictability and sterility of modern GP racing, yet happily, no-one today could contemplate a season in which three top drivers would be killed. The old days weren’t always good.

Whilst most of the motor-racing world seems to have forgotten the last Arab Grand Prix, Bernie Ecclestone won’t – for he was Stuart Lewis-Evans’s manager in that fateful year and for him in Arabia, the wheel has turned from tragedy to triumph.