Ferrari: Race to Immortality Page #3

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and everything was sweetness and light.

It was a sparkling honeymoon

for Peter Collins at Ferrari.

He won in Formula One.

He won in other categories.

Ferrari immediately

recognized his versatility

and overnight, almost,

Peter Collins became a star,

not only in Italy at Ferrari,

but also on the world racing stage.

Victory goes

to Peter Collins and Mike Hawthorn,

with Moss second and Fangio third.

So Peter Collins

wins his first Grand Prix for Ferrari.

Peter Collins joins

that exclusive band of British drivers

to have won a Grande Epreuve.

There's no doubt that Peter Collins

was one of the drivers

that Enzo Ferrari loved.

He felt a real warmth to him,

which he didn't feel

towards all his drivers by any means.

Peter Collins became very friendly

and very close with Dino,

Mr Ferrari's sadly terminally ill son.

My husband did a wonderful job,

in a way,

of helping to communicate

between the dying son and Enzo.

Ferrari was very moved by that,

that Collins should show

such concern for his son.

And Dino's death, of course, was a...

It was a shattering blow

to him and to his wife

and I think

that brought him closer to Collins.

By the end of the '56 season,

Collins has won the Belgian Grand Prix,

he's won the French Grand Prix.

He's in with a shout

of becoming the first British driver

ever to win

the FIA Drivers' World Championship.

There were five Lancia Ferraris

in the race.

There was Fangio, Portago and Collins,

but also Castellotti and Musso

had a fierce, fierce rivalry.

Actually, my guess, as soon

as the Italian Grand Prix started,

Castellotti and also Luigi Musso,

who went for it, you know,

as if the race was starting

on the last lap.

Fangio's car broke down

and in those days you could share a car

with another driver

and get half the points.

Musso came in and it was

suggested to him he should get out

and give the car to Fangio, and Musso

had no interest in that at all.

That was when Collins, of course,

did his famous selfless act.

Collins is poised

to win the World Championship.

He comes into the pits

for his last pit stop,

beckoned to Fangio and said,

"You take my car

and I'll give up my chance

for you to win

yet another World Championship."

I can't actually think

of another driver,

apart from Peter, to do that,

because all Peter had to do

was keep going

and he was the man who would take it.

He respected the superiority

of Fangio as a driver

and I think he felt it would be

unfair of him not to provide the car.

It was a very chivalrous

and respectful gesture,

which Enzo Ferrari appreciated a lot.

Talking to the press afterwards,

Peter apparently said,

"I'm young. I'll get another chance."

I was in a play

at Coconut Grove Playhouse in Florida

and Peter was on his way from Argentina

back to England.

The West Indies, Cuba,

all of Latin America,

are just beyond the horizon

when you make Miami your headquarters.

Stirling Moss actually

told Peter that I was in Florida

and so if he was going through there,

why not say hello?

So, he gave me a ring

and Monday night after the play

we got together, and that was it.

Wednesday he asked me to marry him.

Friday my father came down from New York

to stop this whole nonsense.

He was with the United Nations,

a very dignified human being.

He was a little unhappy,

thinking that his daughter

was going to marry a racing driver

that she didn't even know.

It worked out very beautifully.

When does a star begin to decline?

The day they put personal interests

before the sport itself.

Enzo Ferrari didn't like his drivers

getting tied down

because he didn't like the idea

that they had something else to live for

besides driving his racing cars,

that that would

take the edge off their speed.

I think he loved the cars

more than the drivers

because the cars were loyal to him

and the drivers very often weren't.

Mr Ferrari always maintained

that his team number one

would be the driver

who performed best last Sunday,

which tended to keep them on their toes.

By setting them to some extent

in competition with each other,

by very often having five drivers

for four cars,

it would ensure that they were

performing at their maximum

the whole time for him.

There would have been

quite a lot of culture shock

for Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins

going into the Scuderia Ferrari

where they would have been surrounded

by very competitive playboy drivers.

I had dinner with Ferrari

and we were talking about racing,

as we usually do,

and all of a sudden he said,

"But you know the drivers

will always go to the factory

which produces the fastest car."

And I was just about to protest

my loyalty to Ferrari when I realized

that I would go somewhere else

if they produced a faster car.

There is no loyalty to a factory.

There was a colored,

embittered relationship

between Fangio and Mr Ferrari,

and so when Fangio left Ferrari

at the end of that

World Championship-winning season,

to go to the rival Maserati team,

the only person surprised

was Mr Ferrari.

When Mike Hawthorn rejoined

the Ferrari team at the start of 1957,

they had Collins, Musso,

the Spanish Marquis Fon de Portago

and they had Castellotti.

It was an incredibly strong team.

One thing I've always loved

about Castellotti

was how neat and precise he was

in his everyday life,

and that's always a good sign, I think,

to how you are in a racing car.

And you look at the way

he used to pack his racing suitcase

with all his race kit, everything was

immaculate and perfectly organized,

and I think that showed

another side to Castellotti.

He wasn't just a crazy Italian.

This guy was good.

Castellotti started racing,

effectively, with a Ferrari sports car

that his mother bought him.

He grew up

as a gilded child, really.

He's another immature fellow

that has a lot of money,

and decided he was going to do what most

wealthy Italians wish they could do

and that's be a real racing driver,

and he's pretty good,

but he's not all that good.

You said drivers

can be divided into two categories:

the pros and the ambitious,

i.e. the amateurs.

No doubt.

You said it's not true

that Italians race slower

than foreigners.

But the winners

are almost always foreigners.

Obviously Italians lack

the technical resources

available to foreigners.

Everybody in Italy was mad about racing.

Even if there was no television,

but there was a radio,

they were following what was happening.

I think being an Italian

driving in Italy

and obviously having to prove yourself

constantly against drivers

like Collins, Hawthorn and Moss

was very, very difficult.

In March 1957, Castellotti was

called to do some testing for Ferrari

at the Modena test track.

I mean, it sounds ludicrous, in a way,

that Modena was the test track

that both Ferrari and Maserati used

and why it should have been

so desperately important

who actually held the, you know, the

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