Paco Godia

Paco Godia, a Spanish driver born in 1921, made thirteen World Championship starts spread across five seasons between 1951 and 1958, every one of them in a Maserati. His was an intermittent career, with gaps after 1951 and 1954 breaking up his appearances.

He first entered the championship in 1951, at the age of thirty, without scoring, and a brief return in 1954 was similarly fruitless. It was in 1956 that his persistence paid off: six points that season earned him ninth place in the World Championship, a strong showing for a privateer in an era when only the top handful of finishers scored.

He continued with Maserati machinery in 1957 and 1958, though neither of those final seasons added to his tally and he went unclassified in both.

One of the few Spanish drivers on the Grand Prix grids of the 1950s, Godia ended his World Championship career with six points and a top-ten championship finish from an eight-year span of occasional entries.