Peter Collins

Peter John Collins (6 November 1931 – 3 August 1958) was a Formula One driver from England. He participated in 35 World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on 18 May 1952. He won 3 races, achieved 9 podiums, and scored a total of 47 championship points.

Early life and racing career
Peter Collins was born on 6 November 1931. He grew up in Mustow Green, on the south side of Kidderminster in Worcestershire, United Kingdom. The son of a motor garage owner and haulage merchant, Collins became interested in motor vehicles at a young age. At 16 he was expelled from school after having been caught riding ‘dodgem’ cars at a local fairground during school hours. Becoming an apprentice in his father’s garage, he soon began competing in local trials races.

In common with many British drivers of the immediate post-war period, Collins cut his racing teeth in the frenetic 500cc category (adopted as Formula 3 at the end of 1950), when his parents bought him a Cooper 500 from the fledgling Cooper Car Company. These small machines, powered by motorcycle engines, were also the proving ground of many of Collins' F1 contemporaries, notably including Stirling Moss.

Later career
Collins joined the Aston Martin sports car team in 1952, and scored a sensational victory at the 1952 Goodwood Nine Hours race, sharing an Aston with Pat Griffith. The following year, he took the Aston Martin DB3S he shared with Pat Griffith to victory in the Tourist Trophy at Dundrod.

Collins got his Formula One break in 1952, picking up a drive for the lowly HWM team, replacing Stirling Moss. Results did not come the team's way, and Collins left after the 1953 season. Following spells driving for Vanwall and Maserati, together with a brief outing in a BRM which ended with a crash in qualifying, Collins signed with Ferrari for the 1956 F1 season. Collins' 1956 season with Ferrari proved to be a turning point, with a solid second place finish behind Moss at Monaco, and wins at the Belgian and French Grands Prix. Indeed, Collins was on the verge of becoming Britain's first F1 World Champion when he handed his Lancia-Ferrari D50 over to team leader Juan Manuel Fangio after the latter suffered a steering-arm failure toward the end of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Collins eventually finished second, but the advantage handed to Moss, and the extra points gained by Fangio's finish, demoted Collins to third in the championship. Collins' selfless act gained him respect from Enzo Ferrari.

In 1956, Collins moved to Monaco in order to avoid compulsory military service in the British Army and thus continue his racing career.

In January 1957, Colllins married American actress Louise King, and the couple took up residence on a yacht in Monaco harbor. That same year, Collins was joined at Ferrari by Mike Hawthorn. The two became very close friends, even arranging to split their winnings between each other, and together engaged in a fierce rivalry with fellow Ferrari driver Luigi Musso. However, despite a third-place finish at the Nurburgring, team Ferrari were distinctly under-par for much of the season as the 801 model (an evolution of the 1954 Lancia D50) was by then becoming obsolete. 1958 saw the introduction of the new Ferrari Dino 246, a far improved car, and once again results began to go the way of Scuderia Ferrari. Collins scored his third and final career victory at the British Grand Prix, as well as taking a third place at Monaco. Hawthorn won the fateful 1958 French Grand Prix at Rheims, in which Luigi Musso was killed while holding second place (Stirling Moss eventually took second, with Collins taking fifth place).

During the 1958 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, Collins and Hawthorn were chasing Tony Brooks' Vanwall when disaster struck. Pushing hard to keep pace, Collins went into the Pflanzgarten section, entered a turn too fast and caused his Ferrari to run wide and strike a ditch on the left side of the road. Collins lost control and, in Hawthorn's direct sight, flipped in the air and landed upside down in a cloud of dust. Though Collins was thrown clear as the car somersaulted, he struck a tree, sustaining critical injuries to his head. Despite being airlifted to hospital, Collins died later that afternoon in an almost identical manner to that of Luigi Musso. Already ill from kidney troubles, Hawthorn was noticeably affected by Collins' death, and the former retired from racing immediately after winning the 1958 Driver's Championship. Hawthorn would himself die the following year in an automobile accident while driving on the A3 bypass near Guildford.

Rivalry with Luigi Musso
Many years after the death of Peter Collins, Fiamma Breschi, Luigi Musso's girlfriend at the time of his death, revealed the nature of the rivalry between Collins and Hawthorn with fellow Ferrari driver Musso in a television documentary, The Secret Life of Enzo Ferrari. Breschi recalled that the antagonism between Musso and the two English drivers encouraged all three to take more risks:

"The Englishmen (Hawthorn and Collins) had an agreement," she says. "Whichever of them won, they would share the winnings equally. It was the two of them against Luigi, who was not part of the agreement. Strength comes in numbers, and they were united against him. This antagonism was actually favourable rather than damaging to Ferrari. The faster the drivers went, the more likely it was that a Ferrari would win."

Complete World Championship Formula One results
(key; * shared drive)