Ferrari: Race to Immortality Page #5

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which flares up every now and then."

From what I've been told

he used to get angry with himself

if he was having a weak day

or just feeling lousy.

But I think in terms of people

who knew about it,

there were very, very few people.

He refused to let the government know

because there were questions

in the Houses of Parliament

why Mike Hawthorn wasn't going into

the army, doing his national service.

And he wouldn't let his doctors

tell them why.

He never mentioned his disability,

but he certainly suffered from that

and I think that some days that,

you know, he felt it more than others.

It was very exciting

to be around Monaco.

We bought that boat

and decided to make that our home.

Peter had a nice accident

when his car went into the harbor.

Yeah, that was funny.

I think he did it twice.

Someone said, "You know, your husband

just went into the harbor."

I said, "It's alright.

He did that yesterday. He knows how."

Peter and Mike

had a lot of laughs together,

so when I came in on the scene,

the three of us clicked right away.

We just had such a good, funny time.

Peter was, I think, generally regarded

as a nicer person than Mike.

Mike could be terribly rude,

terribly abrupt.

But with people he liked

and got on with...

he was a great, great friend.

"Mon ami mate" was like a comic strip.

These two characters

go on a trip to Mars.

They look at this Martian,

and to be friendly and saying hello,

they said, "Hello, mon ami mate."

It amused Peter and Mike so much

that they just kept

calling each other "mon ami mate."

It was all very nice and "mon ami mate"

and all that sort of thing,

but I don't think it was

in the best interests of Ferrari.

Formula One team owners

are pretty incapable of managing teams

when you've got two very fast

racing drivers alongside one another,

and we've seen it

through the history of the sport.

Peter Collins and Mike Hawthorn

were basically coming as a package,

and, for the first time, Enzo Ferrari

was faced with this weird situation

where if he said something to Peter,

it actually affected Mike Hawthorn

and vice versa.

It sometimes detracted

from their racing, you know,

and they used to be mucking about,

you know, changing places,

instead of concentrating 100%,

you know.

And I think the sense of competition

was sort of slightly dulled

between Mike and Peter

to their, to their detriment.

I mean, Roy Salvadori said to me once,

"God, if I'd been Enzo Ferrari,

I'd have fired those two."

They were such close friends.

They were almost happier

when the other won.

Enzo always loved it

when his drivers spurred each other on.

You know, and if there were casualties,

well, you know, it happens.

It's been suggested that Hawthorn

and Collins ganged up on Luigi Musso,

who was really the last

of the great Italian drivers left.

He would write to me about

the badgering he had to put up with

from these two people.

Because strength comes in numbers

and they were united against Luigi.

I think you must always wonder,

sort of, "What are they saying?"

"I don't understand what they're

saying." That can't have been easy.

He forged this relationship

with Fiamma,

who was a beautiful girl,

she really was.

Never again

in my life was I so happy

and in love as I was with him.

It was an incredible and amazing thing.

He was really carrying

the weight of Italy on his shoulders

and driving way beyond his means.

Apart from being

the only Italian driver of consequence

in Formula One

and the only Italian at Ferrari,

he also, by all accounts,

was not a very good businessman.

He'd entered into a business deal

to import American cars into Italy.

His backers got more and more concerned

about their investment.

There were also suggestions

that he'd run up some gambling debts.

He certainly was under

some financial stress at the time.

The pressure had been building.

The debts that Musso

was finding himself in.

The enormous rewards

that you could receive

if you won

the French Grand Prix at Reims.

That was a race for Musso to win,

no question about it.

On three or four occasions

in the opening laps,

trying to match Hawthorn's pace

through the very fast right-hand curve

immediately after the pits,

he put two wheels on the verge and

there'd be a puff of dust and stones

and some of the photographers

were saying, you know,

"Hey, he's on the ragged edge."

Because he got it slightly

wrong, he was slightly off line,

the left rear would have caught

the marbles and then he went off

and the car somersaulted

and threw him out.

On the seventh lap

Luigi didn't come around.

I thought his car might have

broken down or he might have stopped.

Nobody made a signal.

And when there is no signal, it's bad.

He was thrown out and suffered

a head injury which took his life.

I was young

and my entire world collapsed.

I ran to the window

to throw myself out.

When a fatal event occurs,

it is never down to a single cause.

It's different things

happening simultaneously,

leading to the sacrifice of a life.

When Luigi Musso died,

Ferrari was upset,

but one way he showed his regret

was to console Musso's girlfriend.

He set her up

in a flower shop in Florence

and spent quite a lot of time with her

and they had quite a long relationship.

Well, the thing is a driver should

have confidence in his own ability,

but not to be so naive as to think,

"It can't happen to me."

If you come round a corner

and you find oil on the circuit,

you can still spin and go off,

so you recognize

that that was beyond your capabilities

and you either accepted that

or you didn't go motor racing.

Nobody's making you motor race.

It was terrible

when you heard somebody was killed,

but, after all,

it was his decision to race.

They were all aware in those days

that it was very dangerous

and they still were doing it.

If you ran off the road and there

was a chance of the car overturning,

it was better to be thrown out

than to be trapped

in the cockpit by seatbelts

and crushed underneath it when it landed

or, worse, burned to death by the fire

that would almost inevitably follow

a fuel-tank burst.

One time Peter almost said something,

and I said, "Don't."

We never discussed

the dangers of motor racing

and I think if we had,

it would have compounded the fear.

And the fear you stuff away.

You don't want to bring that up.

You know, if you get involved

with a racing driver,

you take the risk that something's

probably going to happen,

certainly then

because it was so dangerous.

There was a black humor

in motor racing at that time

to get through.

It was a defense mechanism.

I know that one circuit

we were at there was an accident

and the driver got out and walked away

and the crowds went, "Oh."

It's an awful thing to say,

but it's true.

People go for the excitement.

I was doing time charts

all the time.

That may have helped

keep that fear away.

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