Limit, The (20 page)

Ferrari probably would have stayed in Modena if not for the public outcry. Italian politicians called him a murderer and several national newspapers printed editorials urging the government to abolish the Mille Miglia. The government complied, banishing Italy's premier race thirty-one years after it started. (It resumed in 1977 as a vintage car event.) Manslaughter charges were filed against Ferrari. In court hearings Ferrari acted indignant and hurt. He raced to ennoble Italy, he said, and this was how the government repaid him. The charges were eventually dropped, but Ferrari's sulk lasted for years.

As the outcry subsided the Ferrari drivers returned to the demands of the upcoming season. The rhythms of Modena resumed. “When Castellotti and de Portago died it was because they were trying to be great drivers and going beyond their limits,” Louise King said. “Life went on.”

With Portago's death, Hill and von Trips moved up a rung on the Ferrari ladder. It was a dubious promotion considering what befell their predecessors. It was only a matter of time before they led the lineup—if they lived long enough.

The question of survival applied to von Trips more than Hill. He was the more erratic of the two, alternating head-turning performances with the kind of maddening mistakes that had plagued him from his earliest days. If he were to succeed on the Ferrari team he would have to break the pattern of accidents and mount a winning streak that would dispel his reputation as Count von Crash.

If there was a perfect place for von Trips to solidify his
credibility as a frontline driver it was the Nürburgring, where he would race in the familiar Eifel Mountains surrounded by cheering Germans. Two weeks after his second-place finish in the Mille Miglia he was there, warming up for a 1,000-kilometer race in a Ferrari 250 GT. Like most sports cars configured for racing, its accelerator sat on the floor between the clutch and the brake. He drove a few laps, then, at the request of a team manager, switched to a showroom model, which had the clutch on the right. It was an arrangement he was familiar with, since he owned a showroom Ferrari for private use. He wound through the steep forested hills, tapping and pumping the brakes as he made his way through seventy-two turns per lap on the longest racecourse in Europe. At the Breitscheid curve, an abrupt drop obscured by a bridge, he became momentarily confused by the pedal configuration and hit the gas instead of the brake. He missed a turn and shot through a hedge. His car rolled down a hill and crumpled against a wall.

Von Trips was unconscious when ambulance workers pulled him from the car. Doctors at the local hospital treated him for a broken nose, bruised breastbone, and two broken vertebrae in his lower back. He was moved to a Cologne hospital and fitted with a body cast that extended from his chin to his backside. For three weeks he lay immobilized, reliving the mistake in his mind and worrying that Ferrari would lose faith in him. He could feel himself falling from grace.

Mike Hawthorn (left) and Peter Collins, the
mon ami
mates, after Collins won the British Grand Prix in 1958. It was his redemptive race after falling out of favor with Enzo Ferrari. (© 2011 LAT Photographic)

E
VERY MORNING
for more than a month von Trips woke in his hospital room to face another day spent flat on his back, his torso encased in plaster. He passed the hours opening mail and receiving well wishers with feigned cheer. All of June and into July they marched down the bright hallways of the Cologne hospital—school friends, girlfriends, family. They deposited flowers and food packages on his bedside radio and handed him newspapers in three languages that he flipped open to the motor racing pages. Among other things he read that Hill had come in second at a 12-hour race in Reims, France, and would soon be competing in Sweden, Venezuela, and the Bahamas. The season was continuing without him.

In addition to shooting back pain, von Trips bore the agony of uncertainty. He had no way of knowing if he would race again. And if he did, could he muster the nerve for the
scrum and tussle of competition? The margin between winning and losing was so thin, particularly at the elevated speeds of Grand Prix, that the slightest flinch would eliminate him from competition.

Drivers measured their proximity to the limit in tenths. A manager might order his team to practice at no more than eight-tenths of the limit, meaning fast but not reckless. If they accelerated to nine-tenths they were pushing the edge of control. At ten-tenths they were on the limit, where even the most stoic drivers trembled and perspired. Too often von Trips had transgressed to eleven-tenths and flipped or spun off the road. He would now have to prove that he could reliably drive at ten-tenths, and that he could overcome his crash habit.

In late July 1957 doctors released von Trips from his cast. A few days later he walked out of the hospital to begin his comeback, his second within a year. It would be a slower recovery than expected. When he returned a month later for a check-up, an X-ray showed that the fractures in his vertebrae had not fully healed. He went back into a body cast for three more weeks.

On August 4, friends helped relieve his boredom by pushing him in a wheelchair to watch the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. They propped him up on a low wall overlooking the backstretch, not far from where he had gone off the road two months earlier. His teammates Hawthorn and Collins had given him a set of yellow, blue, and white flags so that he could signal the location of Fangio, their most lethal opponent. “I had my job to do,” von Trips wrote in his diary. “So I signaled them. ‘There he is!' ”

From the sidelines von Trips observed a master class. Fangio had filled his red Maserati's fuel tank only half full so that he
could take the turns faster than the heavy Ferraris, which were fueled to brimming so that they could go the distance without stopping. It was a gamble: Fangio's lightened car leapt out front, but it was unclear if his lead could withstand an early fuel stop. Fangio coasted into the pits with a 30-second lead. His crew struggled to replace his tires, costing him more than a minute. By the time he returned to the road he was 45 seconds behind Collins and Hawthorn. Everyone assumed Fangio could not make up the deficit, but he broke and rebroke the course record nine times as he closed the gap. He crossed the finish line 150 yards ahead of Hawthorn, clinching his fifth world championship. Afterwards Fangio said that he never wanted to drive like that again.

If there was something humiliating about waving flags from the sideline, von Trips didn't show it. Days later his cast came off and he began physical therapy and a regimen of massage and electric impulses designed to relieve pain. He was driving again too, achieving second place in a hillclimb through the highest stretches of the Italian and Swiss Alps. He was eager to prove that he had not lost his edge, and he asked Ferrari if there might be a car for him at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza in early September.

Romolo Tavoni, the team manager, confirmed by letter that a car had already been reserved for him. “As long as you have an interest, you drive,” Tavoni wrote. “This car is only for you. Just watch out if you get tired.” Von Trips did not tire. On the contrary, he drove doggedly, chasing the leaders, Fangio and Moss, to a third-place finish. He was the first Ferrari across the line. More importantly, he appeared unaffected by his crash four months earlier. It is easy to imagine Ferrari smiling to himself
as he listened to the radio coverage in his dimly lit office. Like the prodigal son, von Trips was back.

Meanwhile, the steadfast Hill had to agitate for his due. At the start of the 1958 season he received the summons for his annual meal with Enzo Ferrari. Il Commendatore never attended the races, and he showed up sporadically for practices at the Modena
autodromo
in a linen cap, baggy trousers, and suspenders. The drivers mostly knew him as an enigmatic figure who issued edicts through Tavoni, the perpetually harried team manager and Ferrari mouthpiece. Reed-thin with thick-framed glasses and a pronounced widow's peak, Tavoni looked more like an accountant than a race official. He had the unenviable job of mediating between a bellicose boss and a pack of distrustful drivers.

The drivers never knew for sure where they stood in the team hierarchy. An invitation to dine with Ferrari was a rare chance to gauge one's standing, like a faltering student invited to eat at the headmaster's table. “You would go, wait the standard half an hour or so, and then be shown in for a light bantering exchange,” Hill said. “ ‘
Come stai?
How are you? How's your love life?' That sort of thing. And Ferrari's language could be X-ratedly blunt.”

Then they walked out of the factory gate and across the street for dinner at Il Cavallino, where Ferrari parked his bulk in a straight-backed wooden chair. It was his custom to keep his heavy-rimmed sunglasses on even in the gloom of the dining room. They were part of his ensemble of intimidation.

Hill had a point of contention to discuss over his antipasto. He and von Trips had both joined the Ferrari team a year earlier. Von Trips had gone directly to Formula 1, the most
prestigious racing class, while Hill toiled away in sports cars. Day after day he had stood in the pits, helmet in hand, hoping Tavoni would ask him to take practice laps in Formula 1. He never did. Wasn't it time he got a shot? Had he not proven himself?

“I began to feel that perhaps I was not ever going to be a really first-rate driver, that something in my makeup might prevent me from reaching the ultimate stage in motor racing,” he said. “There are several drivers who do well in sports cars but can't seem to do well with a Grand Prix machine. I was beginning to be haunted by the fear that maybe I'd be one of them. I had to find out.”

Ferrari was noncommittal.
Aspettiamo, vediamo
. Let's wait and see.

“Yeah,” Hill later told a friend. “You wait and we'll see.” Like his father, Ferrari was impossible to please.

In Ferrari's mind, Formula 1 was a form of divine madness. It called for nerveless sprinters—
garibaldini
—who flung themselves to the fight without calculation. That was not Hill's style. Ferrari considered him better suited to long-haul sports car campaigns, like the 12-hours at Sebring or the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where his mechanical acumen and instinct for survival ensured consistent finishes.

It was hard to quibble with Ferrari's reasoning. While one driver after another skidded or somersaulted off tracks, Hill barely dented a fender. His achievement was not winning at the greatest speed, but winning at the slowest. He was what the racing community called a “sympathetic” driver. He could detect the strain of an overpushed engine with his ear and absorb its mood through the vibration of the wheel. He never bullied a
car beyond its capability, choosing instead to nurse it. “He had a terrific feel for the soul of a car,” McCluggage said, “and he was very good to them.” As a result he finished about 80 percent of races he entered. Most drivers finished only half.

“I would rather drive with Phil than any other driver,” said Collins, who drove a sports car in tandem with Hill for part of the 1958 season. “When you get the car from him it is as if it had been sitting in front of the pits all the time.”

Then, as now, Grand Prix races usually took place on Sundays. On the three mornings before a race, Hill steered his car out on the empty track for ten or so laps at a time, edging up to the limit with progressively faster runs. Afterwards he pulled into the pits to discuss tire pressure, balance, suspension settings, and camber. His dark, intense eyes bore down on the mechanics. Don't you hear that? he demanded, cocking his ear to some faint click or rumble. Third gear might be too low, or maybe fourth gear was a tad too high. His manner was that of a man utterly determined to get the chassis tuning, springing, and wheel angles right—exactly right. Garage etiquette barred Hill from touching the car himself. That was the exclusive role of the mechanics. But he could lean over their shoulders, listening as they tightened or tweaked. More, he told them. A little more. There. Perfect.

The mechanics were unaccustomed to working with so skilled a diagnostician. They welcomed his feedback, up to a point. Like Italian tailors or furniture makers, the mechanics were proud craftsmen. They took it as a personal insult when Hill, the agitated perfectionist, diagnosed a problem and prescribed its remedy all in one impatient breath. Tune-up sessions were frequently adjourned for cappuccino, croissants, or wine.
Seated on stacks of spare tires, the mechanics smoked cigarettes and cut thick slices of sausage and cheese. Hill glared at them. He was indignant when they put down their tools before solving the problem at hand.

Hill was not constituted for coyness or dissembling. He had an ingenuous American way of speaking his mind. But over time he learned the Italian manner of diplomacy, dropping clues so the mechanics believed they had fixed the problem on their own.