Limit, The (31 page)

“There were so many people around, so much excitement in the air,” he said. “I would've preferred to crawl into a hole, to get away. But I had to be there in the thick of it. There was no other way.”

On the damp starting grid Tavoni questioned whether to begin the race on dry or wet tires. Hill fretted along with him, pacing around the start area in his crewneck sweater.

With two minutes to go von Trips settled into his car and inserted his rubber earplugs. “The calm comes over me like redemption,” he told Harster. “My helmet's strapped tight. The backup goggles are around my neck; the others are lowered over my eyes. The air valves are open. I slip on my gloves and turn the ignition. It sounds like Niagara Falls heard from far away.”

Rumors had circulated all season that Britain's answer to the Sharknose would soon arrive on the Grand Prix circuit, diminishing the Ferrari advantage and possibly marking the start of a British comeback. At Nürburgring it finally happened, at least in part. A new V8 engine made by the British manufacturer Coventry Climax was fitted into a Cooper chassis for Jack Brabham, the defending world champion. “Doesn't it make a lovely noise?” asked John Cooper, the team owner. The new engine had 185 horsepower—enough to propel Brabham to the front row of the grid, alongside Hill and Moss. Von Trips started a row behind.

Von Trips had hoped to dart through the gap between Brabham and Hill, but Hill blocked his way. Instead, Brabham shot out to a quick lead as the front pack rounded the first curve and
went up a straight behind the pits, around a left-hander, and through a serpentine series of downhill turns called the Hatzenbach. Then Brabham skidded on a damp, shaded patch and plunked his Cooper through a thick hedge and into a ditch, disappearing in a cloud of leaves. Passing drivers were “smiling happily to themselves as they saw Brabham climb out of the V8 Cooper-Climax,”
Motor Sport
reported.

With Brabham gone, Moss inherited the lead and Hill tucked in after him. Von Trips shook loose from the trailing pack and moved into third. It could have been a snapshot taken three months earlier in Monaco: the dark blue Lotus chased by a pair of red Ferraris.

Like Monaco, the Nürburgring was known as a driver's track—a circuit where handling counted as much as horsepower. It was the kind of track where Moss could use his artistry to build an incremental lead, and he did. By the end of the third lap he had a 10-second edge on Hill.

Now von Trips was agitating from behind. On the sixth lap he closed on Hill with a time of 9:08, the fastest ever recorded at the Nürburgring during a race. On the next lap he bettered his own record by four seconds. “Suddenly everything was wonderfully simple,” von Trips said. “Inside of me was a sudden lift, a buoyancy. I was playing with what the course was giving me, not forcing anything. I was in a good spot.”

Von Trips was driving faster and faster, but Moss and Hill kept pace in front of him. On the eighth lap Moss bested von Trips' record with a time of 9:02. Then von Trips overtook Hill and reduced the record to 9:01. A sea of fans waved German flags and white handkerchiefs from the hillsides.

Von Trips' record didn't last long. Hill stirred himself from
third place to break the record once more, recording the first lap under nine minutes during a race. Hill and von Trips had by now scrapped their way up to within seven seconds of Moss. They could see him weaving in and out of the curves ahead, but could they pass him? “Seeing Moss is one thing,”
Motor Sport
wrote in its recap, “and catching him is something quite different.”

Then, in a heart-stopping moment, Hill seemed to disappear at Bergwerk, a tight right turn at the end of a long, fast section. Von Trips lost him in his rearview mirror and assumed that Hill had spun out, or worse. It would take at least thirty seconds to recover from a spin. Hill would never catch him, von Trips thought. Moments later Hill reappeared, as if by magic. He had been there all along, lost in the vibrating mirror.

On lap 13, with two laps left, a soft drizzle began to fall on the dark cedars. Moss, who had insisted on rain tires, pulled away. He seemed robotic in his refusal to give in to exhaustion or make mistakes. He gradually extended his lead, leaving Hill and von Trips to fight their own private battle for second place and the six crucial points that came with it.

The two men raced side by side through meadows and dark tunnels formed by overhanging trees. On the penultimate lap Hill surged past von Trips. It was a critical maneuver. If Hill held on to second, he and von Trips would both have thirty-three points going into the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where von Trips had a history of serious crashes. “When Hill went past me, I was very startled, appalled,” von Trips said. “I tried to stay with it. It took a second for me to reconnect. . . Moss is forgotten. For me, it is now only about how to pass Hill.”

Von Trips slid in behind Hill with the intention of
slipstreaming in his wake before shooting forward for a final surge on the last lap. He was puzzled when Hill slowed slightly ahead of him; it looked suspiciously like an invitation to pass. It took von Trips a few moments to see the trap. Hill wanted to be the one to mount a carefully timed lunge from behind. So von Trips slowed with Hill. They exchanged sly smiles. “We drove for a little while side by side, playing a game: After you, sir,” von Trips said.

They rode shoulder to shoulder uphill at 160 mph and into the final stretch when the Rhineland sky turned a dozen shades of gray. A wall of thunderstorms swept in, like special effects for the closing act. Both cars skated sideways on pools of water. “We were both all over the road,” Hill said, “and damn lucky we didn't take each other out.” Von Trips straightened himself out first and edged Hill by 1.1 seconds for second place under the eyes of his countrymen.

Von Trips sprang from his car in front of the pits. All around him people stood and clapped in the driving rain. Von Trips was handed a bouquet of red and white carnations, which he impulsively passed to Moss in the winner's circle. Moss in turn pulled von Trips under the winner's wreath with him. “It was a barrage of cameras,” von Trips said. “I was full of happiness and thanks and fatigue and hunger. I put on my best Sunday smile.”

“I felt close to Moss in this very special moment,” he added, “but not as close as I had felt a few minutes before with Phil Hill.”

Moss had pulled off his second major upset of the season against the Ferrari juggernaut, but it was von Trips who won the day. The driver who often seemed too impulsive for prime
time had at last proved himself a model of steadiness and control. Hill, who had built his career on consistency, slipped four points behind in the season tally. His analysis: “I screwed it up.”

Their duet would continue on the high-banked turns of Monza, the Death Circuit. Their summer of apprehension was almost over.

Phil Hill after clinching the world championship at the Italian Grand Prix. (Getty Images)

V
ON TRIPS SPENT THE MONTH
before the Italian Grand Prix at Burg Hemmersbach planting tulip bulbs for spring. The oak and chestnut trees shrouding the castle had acquired a red tinge as the nights cooled and summer faded.

The obligations of celebrity intruded on his respite. A German television show interviewed him and he hosted a crew from
Life
magazine, which photographed him strolling the castle forecourt in a dark blazer and tie. Brazen fans occasionally showed up uninvited, only to be turned away by the vigilant Frau Flossdorf.

The count and countess could tell that their son was uncharacteristically tense. Unable to sit still, he drove his Ferrari convertible into Cologne in the evenings to buy
L'Équipe
, a French sports daily that printed more race coverage than German newspapers. The articles were sprinkled with mentions of
driver safety. After so many recent deaths, it was clear that seat belts and other measures would soon be adopted. Von Trips weighed the issue. If he had worn a seat belt at the Nürburgring four years earlier he would likely not have broken two vertebrae. On the other hand, he might be safer without a seat belt in Formula 1 cars because they had no protective roof. Better to be thrown clear, he thought, than trapped inside.

Late one August afternoon he sat in his study surrounded by memorabilia—silver trophies, an Argentine saddle, a tabletop sculpture of the prancing stallion—and dictated notes on safety to Flossdorf. Cars moving at similar speeds rarely smash up, he said. Accidents more often occur when cars of differing velocities converge. “A mountain stream flows in a smooth bed to the valley, calm and quiet,” he said, “and it's only a stone in the way or a bluff that takes the stream from out of its calm and starts it to foaming and rushing. It's the same with a road.”

In late August, a fashion trade magazine named von Trips one of West Germany's best-dressed men. It was a nod to his magnetism more than his wardrobe, which favored polo shirts, slacks, and an Alpine hat. (Though he did seek the advice of his friend John Weitz, a German-American sportswear designer, who urged him to race in pale coveralls to complement the Ferrari red.) Von Trips hosted a party for the honorees at Burg Hemmersbach, where he mingled with actors, a conductor, a foreign minister, and former heavyweight champion Max Schmeling. After cocktails and grilled suckling pig, a guest stumbled outside and splashed about in the pond. Rejoining the party, his wet shoes slipped and he smacked his head hard on the floor. He was carried to von Trips' bedroom where he bled copiously on the count's sheets.

When his guests left, von Trips returned to the quiet of his moated sanctuary, tending his flowers and playing tennis on the private court shaded by overhanging trees just outside the moat. He was exhausted by a flood of letters and telegrams, and vexed by speculation that stardom was feeding his vanity.

“I feel like a thousand eyes are on me,” he wrote to an acquaintance. “They watch me to see the point at which I become a prima donna, with the hope of seeing a prima donna. Not everyone who is suddenly forced into an extraordinary situation changes, but many do. They see things in a different light, they speak differently, and that's what ultimately makes me uncertain and leads me to conclude that I need to try and shut out the world.”

The focus on von Trips intensified in the weeks before the Italian Grand Prix, where the
tifosi
expected him to secure the title. He led by four points, 33 to 29, and he was driving with authority. The season would not end until the October 8 finale in Watkins Glen, New York, but a third-place finish or better in Italy would clinch it for him. He would have to perform only passably to become the first German champion since the glory days of the 1930s when his heroes Rosemeyer and Caracciola made their names.

On August 29, von Trips left Burg Hemmersbach with his school friend Friedrich-Victor Rolff. They snacked from a sack of apples and sandwiches on the drive to Baden-Baden, where a newsreel crew trailed von Trips as he shook hands and signed autographs at a horse race. They swam, played bocce, and ate dinner in a two-hundred-year-old inn. The next morning von Trips belted out American spirituals as they drove. He and Rolff parted in Munich, with von Trips heading south to
Monza where the Italian Grand Prix would take place at the Autodromo Nazionale, a combination of forest road and high-speed oval set in a royal park twelve miles north of Milan. It was known as the Pista Magica, the magic track. Coming late in the season, Monza decided fates. Championships were won and lost in its dark woods.

Von Trips led in points, but he had never won at Monza. Twice he had been carried away from ugly wrecks, both times crashing in the treacherous right-hand turns following the first straightaway. Hill, on the other hand, had won there a year earlier.

The day before the race, von Trips expressed concern about driving in close contact with Ricardo Rodriguez, a nineteen-year-old Mexican rookie recently hired by Ferrari. Von Trips saw in him a younger version of himself, a teen long on instinct but burdened by an undeveloped sense of judgment. Von Trips was eager to get the race over with. “If I drive fast, I'm so calm afterwards, free and clear,” he told Harster, his biographer. “All the tension is gone.”

After his final practice laps, von Trips joined Robert Daley and his wife for tea at a café behind the pits. They found him uncharacteristically reflective—and strangely prophetic—on the eve of his culminating race. “Every driver has a place deep inside him where he's afraid of death,” he told them.

“This could all end tomorrow,” he added. “You never know.”

In a sense, von Trips had already cheated fate by the time he arrived at the track the next morning. Throughout his racing career he helped manage his family's farmland, and he was intent on modernizing its old-fashioned methods. With that in mind he traveled once or twice a year to agricultural events.
Were it not for the Monza race, he might have joined a contingent of German farmers flying that weekend to an agricultural school in Chicago and to Wisconsin for a demonstration of new agricultural machinery. If so, he would have perished. Their charter flight from Düsseldorf crashed in a river after refueling in Shannon, Ireland, killing all but one passenger.