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The elegance of Peter Collins

08. Jan 2022 
by Ziv Knoll
4821 views

For the 1956 season, Ferrari acquired the folded Lancia team’s D50 cars and put together a strong team constituted of Juan Manuel Fangio (picture above at the Nürburgring), who had left Mercedes-Benz with which he had won the 1954 and 1955 titles, Eugenio Castellotti, Luigi Musso and Peter Collins.

Peter Collins and Stirling Moss, the latter now driving for Maserati, provided the great Argentinian an intense challenge on his title defence, each one winning two races.

Going into the final race of the season at Monza, Fangio had an eight-point lead over Collins and the consistent Jean Behra, driving a Maserati. The only way he could lose the title would be to score no points (8 points for the winner), with Collins setting the fastest lap.

In the race Fangio retired , and with Musso unwilling to share his car with the Argentinian, Collins had a great chance of winning his first world title. Peter Collins, in a remarkable act of sportsmanship, instead chose to hand his car over to Fangio to allow the Argentine to finish second in the race, and win his third title in a row.

Picture below: The Scuderia Ferrari with its four cars, for Fangio, Collins, Castellotti and Musso, in the pits of the 1956 Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

Source: DR

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