Notes:
In his book "Piloti, che gente...", Enzo Ferrari wrote about him: "Ebbi di lui una profonda stima come pilota e come uomo. Peter Collins era un bel ragazzo, non tanto alto, con la faccia schietta. La sua passione per le corse era pari alla passione e alla competenza meccanica." (transl. "I had a profound respect for him as a driver and as a man. Peter Collins was a good-looking boy, not that tall, with a straightforward face. His passion for racing was equal to his technical passion and expertise").

Peter Collins was one of the members of the so called “Ferrari Primavera”, the team of young drivers who joined the Scuderia Ferrari and replaced the old generation in the mid-1950s. Others included Luigi Musso, Alfonso Portago, Mike Hawthorn and Eugenio Castellotti. Five young, talented and rich men whose deaths in less than two years, helped create the Ferrari myth.

Born in 1931, the son of Pat Collins, a Kidderminster, Worchestershire, motor trader and haulage merchant, and his wife Elaine, Peter Collins raced cars since he was 17 years old, beginning with a 500 cm³ Formula 3 Cooper MkII-Norton, apparently a birthday present from his parents. Immediately successful, he was into John Heath’s HWM Formula 2 team by 1952, alongside Stirling Moss, and made his maiden Formula 1 Grand Prix start in the 1952 Großer Preis der Schweiz at Bremgarten, Berne, driving an HWM 52-Alta. During the rest of the season, he took a best result of sixth in the French Grand Prix at Rouen-Les-Essarts.

At the same time he joined team Aston Martin, whose team boss John Wyer, never an easy man to please, thought very highly of him as a driver. Collins made his debut in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, paired with Lance Macklin and they kept their works Aston Martin DB3 Spider #25 at a steady pace in fourth place until a crash sidelined them with less than two hours to go for the chequered flag. Exactly two months later, Peter Collins was able to win the BARC 9 Hours of Goodwood, sharing that same car with Pat Griffith.

Still with Aston Martin in 1953, Collins once again with Griffith won the RAC Tourist Trophy, then a round of the newly introduced World Sportscar Championship, held at Dundrod, Northern Ireland, in an Aston Martin DB3S. In sight of the 1954 season, Peter Collins was recruited by Tony Vandervell to drive in the Formula Libre class his Thinwall Special, a 4.5-litre, Ferrari-derived single-seater. He was also the first to drive the original Vanwall Special "01" Formula 1 car, finishing second in the non-championship goodwood Trophy, close behind his friend Moss' Maserati 250F, and seventh in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. He was signed up by Owen Racing Organisation for 1955, waiting for the new BRM Type 25 Grand Prix car which arrived late in the season. He drove Owen's Maserati 250F, winning the BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone and making an appearance in the World Championship's British Grand Prix at Aintree. And in the subsequent Italian Grand Prix at Monza he was invited by Officine Maserati to drive their factory 250F - retired on 22nd lap due to gearbox trouble.

As a works Aston Martin sportscar driver, in 1955 Peter Collins finished second with Paul Frère in the ill-starred 24 Hours of Le Mans, when more than 80 spectators died after Pierre Levegh's Mercedes-Benz left the track.

Finally, in October his 1955 season was crowned by his brilliant drive in the harrowing Targa Florio, for the first time a round of the World Sportscar Championship. Amongst the contestants of the 13-lap race on the Madonie Piccolo Circuito, for a total of 936 kilometers (581.7 miles), were the Officine Maserati, Scuderia Ferrari and Daimler Benz AG factory teams. Peter Collins who was hired to be part of the latter, was scheduled to drive with Moss in the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR bearing the race number 104. While dicing for the lead with Eugenio Castellotti's Ferrari 860 Monza, Moss hit backwards a stone wall, sliding on the treacherous course due to the heavy rains during the night preceding the start. He managed to restart only thanks to the help of Sicilian spectators and, at the end of fourth lap he entered the pitlane and was replaced by Peter Collins, who soon assumed the lead. Collins and Moss eventually won the race, at an average speed of 96.291 km/h (59.8 mi/h). It was Collins' memorable one-off that clinched Mercedes-Benz's second World Championship that year, and the Englishman probably would have signed for Mercedes-Benz in 1956 had the Germans continued racing.

His performances were good enough to land him a call by the Scuderia Ferrari for the 1956 season, as team mate to the great Juan Manuel Fangio. With Ferrari, Peter Collins won many sportscar races, starting from the 1956 Giro di Sicilia, the tough road race of about 1,080-kilometer (671.2-mile) all around the coast roads of Sicily, co-driven by Louis Klementaski, in a 3.5-litre Ferrari 860 Monza, only 53 seconds ahead of the Maserati 300S of veteran Piero Taruffi who he admired so much. In 1956 he also won the Gran Premio Supercortemaggiore - later known as 1000 Km of Monza - partnered with Mike Hawthorn, in a Ferrari 500 Mondial, and in 1957 that chaotic Venezuelan Grand Prix at Caracas, with Phil Hill in a Ferrari 335 Sport. And in 1958, which proved to be his final season, he shared a Ferrari 250TR once again with Californian Hill, taking two consecutiove victories in the 1000 Km of Buenos Aires and in the 12 Hours of Sebring.

In Formula 1, in his early days at Ferrari, Collins took a solid second-place finish behind Moss' Maserati 250F at the 1956 Grand Prix de Monaco, sharing with Fangio the drive of the Lancia-Ferrari D50. Then he won outright the Belgian and French Grands Prix, earning the unstinting admiration of Enzo Ferrari, who had just lost from muscular dystrophy his son Dino, aged 24, in June 1956. "I had a profound respect for him as a driver and as a man." Peter Collins proved his major moral talent during the 1956 Italian Grand Prix, when he was on the verge of becoming Britain's first Formula 1 World Champion. He voluntarily stopped his run and handed his Lancia-Ferrari D50 to Fangio, who was in the pits after suffering a steering-arm failure with his car, and the Argentine Maestro won his fourth World Championship, Collins finishing third in the standings. A gesture which remained imprinted in the history of the Formula 1 world. "I would not have been proud of beating Fangio through his bad luck. I am only 25 years old and have plenty of time to win the championship on my own. Fangio needs to remain a World Champion for another year yet."

Sadly, Peter Collins never had the chance to win the World Championship of his own, as just two years later he would lose his life in an almost inexplicable Formula 1 crash, at the end of a practically incident-free career. At the time, he was once again a World Championship contender, after winning the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, on 19 July. It happened on the eleventh lap of the German Grand Prix on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, on Sunday, 03 August 1958, less than one month after Luigi Musso's death, during the French Grand Prix at Reims.

When Ferrari presented the new weapon for the 1958 World Championship, the Ferrari Dino 246, Collins with Hawthorn and Musso were regular members of the Ferrari Formula 1 team. Musso was nearly five years older than Hawthorn and more than seven years than Collins. There was a feud between Musso and his two team mates at Ferrari, the two Englishmen made an agreement and whichever of them would win a race, they would share the prizes equally. Musso was not part of the agreement and the two were united against him. Enzo Ferrari who presumably knew about the pact between his two British drivers, considered this antagonism actually favourable rather than damaging to the team. Any of his drivers had won, the more likely was that a Ferrari car had won. Ironically, within eight months all three men would be dead.

During the 1958 German Grand Prix, both Collins and Hawthorn were pursuing Tony Brooks' Vanwall VW4. On the approach to the right-hander called Pflantzgarten, Peter Collins' Ferrari was very close to the Vanwall. For unknown reason, he went into the bend too fast, was unable to hold his usual line and ran wide, hit the bank at an estimate speed of 150 km/h (93.2 mi/h). The car overturned, coming to rest upside-down in a field. The driver was removed from the wreckage and was transported by a German Army helicopter to the Universitätsklinik in Bonn, for an emergency operation, but he passed away that same evening.

During his career, Peter Collins made 32 Grand Prix starts, taking three wins, nine podium finishes and a total of 47 championship points. After his death, his team mate and friend Hawthorn was so disturbed that he decided to quit racing immediately after winning the 1958 World Championship title. Hawthorn himself would die in January 1959 as a result of a road accident.

Peter Collins is buried in St. Mary the Virgin Churchyard in Stone, Wyre Forest District, Worcestershire, England. He was survived by his wife Louise Cordier, a famous model and actress, whom he had married 18 months earlier, after a seven-day courtship. She was rushed by car to Bonn hospital but arrived too late, when Peter Collins was already dead. Louise's father, Andrew Cordier worked as an executive assistant to Dag Hammarskjöld, the Secretary General of the United Nations from 1953 to 1961. In 1966, John Frankenheimer director of the famous movie "Grand Prix" said the Pat Stoddard character, played by Jessica Walter in the film, was based on Louise Collins.

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• E-mail by Mick Preston, dated 09 September 2011, citing [P1].