Peter Collins | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Peter John Collins (1931-11-06)6 November 1931 Kidderminster,Worcestershire, England |
| Died | 3 August 1958(1958-08-03) (aged 26) |
| Cause of death | Injuries sustained at the 1958 German Grand Prix |
| Spouse | |
| Formula One World Championship career | |
| Nationality |  British |
| Active years | 1952–1958 |
| Teams | HWM,Vanwall,BRM,Maserati,Ferrari |
| Entries | 35 (32 starts) |
| Championships | 0 |
| Wins | 3 |
| Podiums | 9 |
| Careerpoints | 47 |
| Pole positions | 0 |
| Fastest laps | 0 |
| First entry | 1952 Swiss Grand Prix |
| First win | 1956 Belgian Grand Prix |
| Last win | 1958 British Grand Prix |
| Last entry | 1958 German Grand Prix |
| 24 Hours of Le Mans career | |
| Years | 1952–1958 |
| Teams | Aston Martin,Ferrari |
| Best finish | 2nd(1955,1956) |
| Class wins | 2(1955,1956) |
Peter John Collins (6 November 1931 – 3 August 1958) was a Britishracing driver, who competed inFormula One from1952 to1958. Collins won threeFormula One Grands Prix across seven seasons. Inendurance racing, Collins won the12 Hours of Sebring in1958 withFerrari.
Born and raised inKidderminster, Collins started his racing career aged 17 in a 500ccCooper 500. The 500cc category becameFormula Three in 1950, where he finished third in the 1951Autosport National Formula 3 Championship. He then progressed toFormula Two withHWM in 1952, who promoted him to Formula Onethat season to replaceStirling Moss, making his debut at theSwiss Grand Prix. Collins made intermittent appearances over the next four seasons for HWM,Vanwall andMaserati; despite scoring no World Championship points, he took major wins at the1953 RAC Tourist Trophy withAston Martin and the non-championship1955 BRDC International Trophy. Following his victory at the1955 Targa Florio withMercedes, Collins was signed byFerrari in1956. He was immediately successful at Ferrari, taking his maiden wins at theBelgian andFrench Grands Prix amongst several podiums, and finishing third in theWorld Drivers' Championship. After a winless1957 season, Collins died during the1958 German Grand Prix at theNürburgring, just weeks after winning theBritish Grand Prix. He had achieved three wins and nine podiums—with four non-championship race wins—in Formula One.
Outside of Formula One, Collins was twice runner-up in the24 Hours of Le Mans in1955 and1956 with Aston Martin, as well as in the1956 Mille Miglia with Ferrari. In popular culture, Collins was portrayed byJack O'Connell in the sports drama filmFerrari (2023).
Born on 6 November 1931, Collins grew up in Mustow Green,Kidderminster,Worcestershire, England. The son of a motor-garage owner and haulage merchant, Collins became interested in motor vehicles at a young age. He was expelled from school at 16 owing to spending time at a local fairground during school hours. He became an apprentice in his father's garage and began competing in local trials races.[citation needed]
In common with many British drivers of the time, Collins began racing in the 500 cc category (adopted asFormula 3 at the end of 1950), when his parents bought him a Cooper 500 from the fledglingCooper Car Company.[1] Success for Collins started once he switched to the JBS-Norton in 1951. Those small vehicles, powered byNorton motorcycle engines, were also the proving ground of many of Collins's F1 contemporaries, includingStirling Moss.
His breakthrough came, away from the track, when at a party hosted by the great pre-war lady racer,Kay Petre, Collins managed to inveigle himself withJohn Wyer, the team principal atAston Martin, earning his test drive atSilverstone. During that test, Aston was joined by theFormula 2 team,HWM – and by the time the teams were preparing to leave, Collins had a contract with both.[2][self-published source]
At HWM Collins he became part of a three-car team withLance Macklin and Moss, and they competed in most of the F2 races in Britain and in Europe. Collins showed in speed, but the underfinanced HWM-Alta rarely finished a race. His best result was second place in the Grand Prix des Sables d'Olonne.[3] Collins got his Formula One break in 1952, with HWM when he replaced Moss.[1] His best result in a World Championship event that year was sixth in theFrench Grand Prix atRouen-Les-Essarts.[4]
Success did not come the team's way, and Collins left after the 1953 season. Not known for his technical knowledge, Collins was happy to have his mechanics set up his car, and he simply drove it with his consummate natural skill. This was evident in 1954, whenTony Vandervell signed Collins to drive the fearsome "Thinwall Special". The potent machine was a crowd pleaser atFormula Libre events. He was also amongst the first to handle the "Vanwall Special" on the world stage, but he only finished seventh in theItalian Grand Prix atMonza.[5]
After being a constant thorn inBRM's side, he joined the team for the 1955 season. He raced aMaserati 250F belonging to team owner,Alfred Owen, winning theBRDC International Trophy and theLondon Trophy. These results led to a drive with the works Maserati in theItalian Grand Prix.[1][6]
Meanwhile, he had better success in sportscars. Throughout the first half of the 1950s, Collins was a stalwart performer for the Aston Martin team, scoring a sensational victory at the 1952Goodwood Nine Hours race.[1] The following year he took theAston Martin DB3S he shared withPat Griffith to victory in theRAC Tourist Trophy atDundrod.[7] Further successes included second places in an Aston Martin DB3S at Le Mans in1955 and1956 withPaul Frère and Moss respectively.
For the 1956 season, Collins joined Ferrari on the strength of a superb drive in the previous year'sTarga Florio, in which he partnered Moss to victory in aMercedes-Benz 300 SLR.[1] This proved to be a turning point, with a solid second-place finish behind Moss at theMonaco Grand Prix,[8] and wins at theBelgian[9] andFrench Grands Prix.[10] In those early days at Ferrari, Collins earned the unstinting admiration ofEnzo Ferrari, devastated by the untimely death from muscular dystrophy at age 24 of his son,Dino, and who turned to Collins for solace, treating him as a member of the family.[11]
Collins was on the verge of becoming Britain's first F1 World Champion when he handed hisLancia-Ferrari D50 over to team leaderJuan Manuel Fangio after the latter suffered a steering-arm failure toward the end of theItalian 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 place in the championship.[12] Collins's selfless act gained him respect from Enzo Ferrari and high praise from Fangio: "I was moved almost to tears by the gesture... Peter was one of the finest and greatest gentlemen I ever met in my racing career."[13]
Meanwhile, in sports cars, he finished second in aFerrari 860 Monza in theMille Miglia[14] and at the Swedish Sports Car GP in a Ferrari 290MM withWolfgang von Trips in 1956;[15] and then in 1957 finished second in the1000km of Nürburgring withOlivier Gendebien[16] and won theVenezuelan Grand Prix withPhil Hill, all in aFerrari 335 S.[17] Finally, in 1958 he won the1000 km Buenos Aires[18] and the12 Hours of Sebring in aFerrari 250 TR with Phil Hill. These three were back-to-back. His last World Sports Car Championship podium was another second place at the 'Ring withMike Hawthorn.
Also in 1956, Collins moved toMonaco to avoidcompulsory military service in the British Army and thus continue his racing career.[19]
In January 1957, Collins married American actress Louise King, daughter of the executive assistant to UN Secretary GeneralDag Hammarskjöld,[20] and the couple took up residence on a yacht in Monaco harbour. In the same year, Collins was joined at Ferrari by Hawthorn.[1] 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 driverLuigi Musso.[21] However, despite a third-place finish at theGerman Grand Prix,[22] Ferrari were disadvantaged for much of the season as the801 model (an evolution of the 1954 Lancia D50) was overweight and underpowered. However, Collins did score some wins that season, taking victory in the non-championshipSyracuse[23] andNaples Grands Prix.[24]
1958 saw the introduction of the new, improvedFerrari Dino 246 and results started to improve for Scuderia Ferrari. Although achieving few results in the first half of the season, Collins improved and won the non-championshipBRDC International Trophy at Silverstone,[25] then finished third at theMonaco Grand Prix.[26] However, Enzo Ferrari felt Collins was distracted by his supposed playboy lifestyle. The Monaco yacht where he lived was considered a perpetual party by Ferrari, who thought Collins was distracted and no longer focused on driving and developing sports cars.
Collins was sacked by Ferrari after deliberately damaging the clutch in his car, which he shared with Mike Hawthorn during the24 Hours of Le Mans rather than race in a rainstorm, and was found drinking in a pub in England before the end of the race. Ferrari relented and allowed Collins to drive an F2 car until the end of the season. At theFrench Grand Prix atReims, Hawthorn refused to start unless Collins was allowed to start in a F1 car. He did, and finished fifth. Ferrari immediately sacked Collins again. Hawthorn responded by flying to Italy and storming the Ferrari headquarters inModena. Having smashed down locked doors, Hawthorn told Enzo Ferrari he would not drive for him again unless Collins was given his Formula One seat again; Ferrari relented.
Following Musso's death at Reims, Ferrari was left without one of his top drivers, and so Collins's position was for now safe. At theBritish Grand Prix at Silverstone, Collins achieved perhaps his greatest drive. Under team orders and desiring to help his friend Hawthorn win the Championship, Collins led from the start, running flat out in an effort to beat theVanwall of Moss. Although in an inferior car to the main contenders, by driving at the limit for 45 laps Collins gradually pulled away from Moss until his Vanwall expired and Collins won.[1][27] The Ferrari team management decided not to slow Collins down and flag Hawthorn through to the win after Collins's great drive. Moss's future patron,Rob Walker, told Collins after the race that he found Collins's driving frightening and he should never drive like that again. It was his third and final career victory.
During the1958 German Grand Prix at theNürburgring, whilst chasingTony Brooks's Vanwall, Collins had a fatal crash. After pushing hard to keep pace, Collins went into the Pflanzgarten section of the circuit too quickly, which caused his Ferrari to run wide and encounter a ditch. Collins lost control of his car, as it flipped into the air and landed upside down. Collins was thrown from the car and struck a tree, sustaining critical head injuries.[1] Despite treatment, Collins died later in the afternoon at a hospital inBonn.[2] His death was almost identical to the fate which his Ferrari teammateLuigi Musso suffered. Teammate Mike Hawthorn was so disturbed by Collins's death that he retired from racing immediately after winning the 1958 Drivers' Championship. Hawthorn himself died during the following year after an automobile accident on theA3 bypass nearGuildford,Surrey, England. In Tony Brooks's autobiography, he recalled that he drove harder in that race, in the duel with Collins and Hawthorn, than at any other time in his life but, as in earlier duels with Fangio, the Ferrari pair were passing and repassing only on the safer North and South curves.[28]
Many years after the death of Peter Collins, Fiamma Breschi, Luigi Musso's girlfriend at the time of his death, revealed in a television documentary entitledThe Secret Life of Enzo Ferrari the rivalry between teammates Collins, Hawthorn and Musso. Breschi recalled that the antagonism between Musso and the two English drivers encouraged all three to take risks. She said: "The Englishmen (Hawthorn and Collins) had an agreement. 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."[21]
Collins married Louise King in 1957, one week after they met in Miami, having proposed after two days. Louise was American, and her father was a U.S. representative to theUnited Nations. She would be widowed in 1958 when Collins crashed at the Nürburgring.[29] She was interviewed in the movieFerrari: Race to Immortality.[30]
(key)
| Year | Entrant | Chassis | Engine | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | WDC | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1952 | HW Motors | HWM52 | Alta F2 2.0L4 | SUI Ret | 500 | BEL Ret | FRA 6 | GBR Ret | GER DNS | NED | ITA DNQ | NC | 0 | |||
| 1953 | HW Motors | HWM53 | Alta GP 2.5L4 | ARG | 500 | NED 8 | BEL Ret | FRA 13 | GBR Ret | GER | SUI | ITA | NC | 0 | ||
| 1954 | Vandervell Products | Vanwall Special | Vanwall 254 2.5L4 | ARG | 500 | BEL | FRA | GBR Ret | GER | SUI | ITA 7 | ESP DNS | NC | 0 | ||
| 1955 | Owen Racing Organisation | Maserati250F | Maserati 250F1 2.5L6 | ARG | MON | 500 | BEL | NED | GBR Ret | NC | 0 | |||||
| Officine Alfieri Maserati | ITA Ret | |||||||||||||||
| 1956 | Scuderia Ferrari | Ferrari555 | Ferrari 555 2.5L4 | ARG Ret | 3rd | 25 | ||||||||||
| Lancia-FerrariD50 | Ferrari DS50 2.5V8 | MON 2* | 500 | BEL 1 | FRA 1 | GBR 2* | GER Ret* | ITA 2* | ||||||||
| 1957 | Scuderia Ferrari | Lancia-FerrariD50 | Ferrari DS50 2.5V8 | ARG 6* | 9th | 8 | ||||||||||
| Ferrari801 | MON Ret | 500 | FRA 3 | GBR 4* | GER 3 | PES | ITA Ret | |||||||||
| 1958 | Scuderia Ferrari | Ferrari246 | Ferrari 143 2.4V6 | ARG Ret | MON 3 | NED Ret | 500 | BEL Ret | FRA 5 | GBR 1 | GER Ret | POR | ITA | MOR | 5th | 14 |
Source:[73] | ||||||||||||||||
* Shared drive
(key) (Races inbold indicate pole position) (Races initalics indicate fastest lap)
| Year | Team | Co-Drivers | Car | Class | Laps | Pos. | Class Pos. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1952 | Aston Martin Ltd. | Lance Macklin | Aston Martin DB3 | S3.0 | DNF | DNF | |
| 1953 | Aston Martin Ltd. | Reg Parnell | Aston Martin DB3S | S3.0 | 16 | DNF | DNF |
| 1954 | David Brown |  "Bira" | Aston Martin DB3S | S3.0 | 137 | DNF | DNF |
| 1955 | Aston Martin Ltd. |  Paul Frère | Aston Martin DB3S | S3.0 | 302 | 2nd | 1st |
| 1956 | David Brown | Stirling Moss | Aston Martin DB3S | S3.0 | 299 | 2nd | 1st |
| 1957 |  Scuderia Ferrari |  Phil Hill | Ferrari 335 S | S3.0 | 2 | DNF | DNF |
| 1958 | Scuderia Ferrari | Mike Hawthorn | Ferrari 250 TR 58 | S3.0 | 112 | DNF | DNF |
Source:[74] | |||||||
| Year | Team | Co-Drivers | Car | Class | Laps | Pos. | Class Pos. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1953 | Aston Martin, Ltd. | Geoff Duke | Aston Martin DB3 | S3.0 | 52 | DNF | DNF |
| 1954 | Aston Martin, Ltd. | Pat Griffith | Aston Martin DB3S | S3.0 | 26 | DNF | DNF |
| 1956 | David Brown & Sons, Ltd. | Stirling Moss | Aston Martin DB3S | S3.0 | 51 | DNF | DNF |
| 1956 | Ferrari Factory |  Maurice Trintignant | Ferrari 315 S | S5.0 | 198 | 6th | 5th |
| 1958 | Scuderia Ferrari | Phil Hill | Ferrari 250 TR 58 | S3.0 | 200 | 1st | 1st |
Source:[74] | |||||||
| Year | Team | Co-Drivers | Car | Class | Pos. | Class Pos. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1953 | Aston Martin Lagonda | Mike Keen | Aston Martin DB3 | S+2.0 | 16th | 10th | |
| 1954 | David Brown | Pat Griffith | Aston Martin DB3S | S+2.0 | DNF | DNF | |
| 1955 | Aston Martin Ltd. | Aston Martin DB3S | S+2.0 | DNF | DNF | ||
| 1956 | Scuderia Ferrari | Louis Klemantaski | Ferrari 860 Monza | S+2.0 | 2nd | 2nd | |
| 1957 | Scuderia Ferrari | Louis Klemantaski | Ferrari 335 S | S+2.0 | DNF | DNF | |
Source:[74] | |||||||
| Preceded by | Formula One fatal accidents 3 August 1958 | Succeeded by |
| Sporting positions | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | BRDC International Trophy Winner 1955 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | BRDC International Trophy Winner 1958 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
