Ferrari: Race to Immortality Page #2

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This battle royal that's

been raging in those opening laps

really reached a climax

that was just more cataclysmic

than anybody could possibly imagine.

Everything went normally in practice

and I was given the job

of starting doing the first spell

and I was actually out on the circuit

when this dreadful accident happened.

Coming out of the White House bends

and up towards the pits,

Mike saw the opportunity

to lap one more car

before he pulled across to the right

and braked for his scheduled pit stop.

That one last car was the Works'

Austin-Healey driven by Lance Macklin.

Trouble was that race was the first time

the new rule had come in

where you had to change the driver

every two hours.

So Mike knew that another lap

would have taken him over the two hours.

In braking hard, Lance Macklin

pulled out very sharply to the left

to avoid the back of Mike's Jaguar.

There's an almighty bang and Levegh's

car came sort of right over the top.

His wheel came right past my left ear

and I could feel the heat of his exhaust

as he went by he was so close.

Levegh ran up the sloping tail

of the Austin-Healey,

flew best part of 100 yards

completely airborne

and then crashed belly-first

on to the top edge of the safety bank

in front of him.

Approaching the pits

I saw a blue flag out, so I eased off

and of course

I came across this absolute chaos.

When Levegh's Mercedes

hit the top edge of the bank

the chassis sheared

and the entire front end assembly

was hurled through the crowd

and it went through the crowd

like a torpedo.

And it killed over 80 of them

and it injured over 100 more.

There were even children

in the front row

who'd been put there for the best view

and they were right in the firing line

of the wreckage that tore through them.

What most people didn't realize

was that it was on such a grand scale

and why the organizers

had decided to continue the race

was to enable them to get the emergency

vehicles away from the circuit.

I hadn't seen anything

of the accident as such

because where I ended up

was about 200 or 300 yards

from where the accident was.

I could see the car burning

on the side of the track,

but at least I thought

it didn't go in the crowd.

I went into the Austin-Healey pit

and Donald Healey told me

that Mike had come in

and said to Lance,

"Can you ever forgive me?"

He literally sort of staggered

across to where we were,

tears pouring down his face, came up

to me, put his arm over my shoulder,

and said, "I've killed all these people.

I'll never race again," and so on.

A few hours later

he was back in the car driving again.

Hawthorn and Bueb drove a brilliant

remaining part of the race to win.

And contemporary movie

shows Mike very conflicted

in his facial expressions

about whether

to enjoy this victory or not.

But when he did break into a grin,

stills photographers got that photograph

and photographs of a beaming Mike

Hawthorn, having just won at Le Mans,

after the colossal tragedy

that had marred the race,

were used by the press

to vilify Mike around the world.

It did affect him terribly.

He was desperately upset,

but it wasn't actually his fault.

I mean, he was exonerated

and he shouldn't have to feel like that.

He had this sort of air

of devil-may-care, you know, attitude,

but actually he did care,

he cared an awful lot.

Behind success

there is a terrible truth.

Italians are prepared

to forgive anything and anyone.

Thieves, murderers.

All sorts of criminals.

Except for success. They won't

forgive anyone for being successful.

Ferrari in Italy was

a towering figure, even at the time.

He was the single most significant

automotive industry figure

of the 20th century.

He was a survivor. He was a chameleon.

Such a manipulator of men.

He regarded it as a sport

in its own right, I think.

The Scuderia was a stable effectively

in which Ferrari would pick

the best talent that he could find.

The drivers were

the public face of the Scuderia

and he would take the cream

of the talent that was available to him.

Eugenio Castellotti

came from a little town called Lodi.

He got into racing

because it was a big macho deal.

It was what the king of the kids

would do. "Hey, look at me."

And he did have a talent.

He had a shining talent, in fact.

Musso was from Rome.

He was an Elio di Angelis of the time,

whereas Castellotti was

a street fighter from northern Italy.

Luigi Musso was a charismatic Italian

racing driver of the first order.

Let's not mince words here.

The guy was very good.

I think while Castellotti

and Musso were at Ferrari together

there was a certain amount

of shared responsibility, if you like.

You've got two drivers there

who brought Italy into Grand Prix racing

in a way that is unimaginable now

because the whole country was behind

them and both of them gave it 100%.

Fon de Portago was a nobleman

and a sportsman

of every possible variety

and he was

a very attractive personality.

He was a real playboy,

but he was a playboy, you know,

who didn't mind getting his hands dirty.

He is a man devoted to sport,

whether it be skiing,

bobsleighing, waterskiing,

swimming, fishing, hunting,

whatever it might be.

He was in some ways

the sort of most natural Ferrari driver

of the whole of the 1950s.

If you had to design a Ferrari driver,

it would have been Fon de Portago.

And he had the girlfriends

to go with it too.

The Scuderia was led

by Juan Manuel Fangio

and Castellotti apparently

would hang on Fangio's every word.

Fangio to me is the best driver

in the world bar none.

He was a great man. He was a man

that whatever he could do once,

he could continue to do.

And it was a beautiful balance

and a rhythm of a man and a vehicle.

Enzo Ferrari was once asked

when a car crosses the line

to take the checkered flag,

how much of it is car,

how much of it is driver?

And he said, "60% car, 40% driver."

The sad thing was that Ferrari

didn't spend enough time

learning how to deal with the drivers

individual to individual.

Now every driver

has a different style of his own.

Hawthorn has an expression of a man

who is fighting on his face.

Peter Collins

is always making faces at the crowd,

not deliberately,

but I have yet to see a picture of Peter

in which he isn't making

some kind of a face.

Peter Collins

had been driving for BRM

and then he was offered

a drive with Ferrari,

which would have been fantastic.

What an amazing opportunity.

Ferrari set himself up

as the spider

in the middle of this extraordinary web

and he ensured

that everybody had to come to him.

He never went to them.

There is a story that Peter

Collins, when he went there to sign up,

he thought, "Oh, you know,

this is gonna be a big deal, you know."

And, in fact, Peter

was kept waiting and waiting

and waiting, and he was on the point

of giving it all up as a bad job

when ultimately Mr Ferrari

came sailing in

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