With no races being held in the Argentine this year the Monaco GP was the first Grande Epreuve of the season and naturally everyone wanted to be in it but, as usual, the number of cars permitted to start on the narrow and twisting 3.145-km circuit was limited to sixteen. This year a different arrangement of selection was used, in place of the previous idea of taking the sixteen fastest in practice out of those invited to compete.
Each factory team was given two places for their leading drivers, so that Bonnier and Gurney were in for Porsche, Graham Hill and Brooks for BRM, Brabham and McLaren for Cooper, Clark and Ireland for Lotus, and Phil Hill and von Trips for Ferrari. In addition to these ten Moss and Trintignant were given definite entries, as members of private teams, because they were both past winners of the race!
This meant that there were four places left for the remainder of the entry, to be decided between them on practice times; and battling for these places were Ritchie Ginther with a third works Ferrari, Hans Herrmann with a third works Porsche, Gendebien and Bianchi with Emerysons from the Equipe National Belge, Allison and Henry Taylor with UDT-Laystall Lotus cars, Masten Gregory with the Camoradi Cooper, Michael May, the Swiss driver, with Seidel’s Lotus, and John Surtees with a Yeoman Credit Cooper.
