Another Ascari versus Fangio excerpt

/ Christiaan W. Lustig / Leave a comment

Here’s another excerpt from the Ascari versus Fangio chapter:

Fangio started to feel like a stranger in his own team. He never felt that Ferrari could be his team. Not like Ascari had appeared to have made it his team, from the very start of the championship. He was obviously the Old Man’s favourite, being the son of Ferrari’s former team-mate and close friend Antonio, when both were employed by Alfa Romeo, and having been on the Scuderia’s roster since 1949. And not even like Collins apparently had, with Ferrari even giving Collins the prototype of the formidable 250 GT Cabriolet road car. Little did he know that it was because Enzo couldn’t stand Collins driving a Lancia Flaminia, and that Collins only had it on loan.

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Senna poses with Frank Williams prior to first F1 test

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Ayrton Senna, 1983

Here’s a very nice, and very informal photograph that Peter Windsor took of Ayrton Senna and Frank Williams, just prior to Senna’s first Formula One test.

Villeneuve versus Prost excerpt

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Here’s another excerpt, this time from Mattijs’ Villeneuve versus Prost chapter:

Pironi wasn’t really a threat to Villeneuve in the ‘shitbox’ they had been given last year. At times, Gilles found ways to drive around it while Didier was simply lost. But now, in the car that had been handed to them by Harvey Postlethwaite, Pironi was on top of things, performing like the World Champion elect he sometimes made himself appear to be in 1980, on every occasion the Ligier was handling at its best. This afternoon, at Zolder, he was simply majestic at a track on which he had shone before. The Belgians – especially the ones feeling half French – hadn’t forgotten Pironi’s dominating 1980 win and now, two years later, he’d done it again. A Ferrari driver was finally leading the World Championship again, and it wasn’t the man driving the No.27 car. Gilles Villeneuve, for once having left his family behind in Monaco where Melanie was preparing for her first communion, felt alone. At the end of a long day he walked back to the helicopter pad, head down. It would be a long flight home.

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Ascari versus Fangio excerpt

/ Christiaan W. Lustig / Leave a comment

Here’s a little excerpt from the Ascari versus Fangio chapter:

Fangio knew there would be a downside to Ferrari’s offer, as well. Because there had been a surprise participant at the 1955 Italian Grand Prix. Alberto Ascari, by then almost fully healed from the injuries sustained in his Monza test crash, had been forced to look for new employment after Lancia’s demise, and had decided to re-join the Scuderia that he had so successfully raced for from 1949 through 1953. And although Ascari would finish the final world championship race in third position, behind Mercedes drivers Fangio and Piero Taruffi — a sound return after his forced summer break — he was as ready for the new season as he could be. Even though Fangio would, for the first time since 1951 have an other world champion as his team mate, he decided to take Ferrari’s offer.

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Working on Ascari versus Fangio story

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The last three weeks I’ve been working on the first chapter of the Ascari versus Fangio story.

It’s about the events of 1955 leading up to Ascari’s Monza crash, which, of course, he survives, and the Italian joining his former Lancia team mate Eugenio Castellotti, at Ferrari, only to find reigning world driver’s champion Juan Fangio in the third Ferrari (née Lancia) D50, as well as the first Grands Prix of the 1956 season, in South America.

By the way, I found that in our preferred summer vacation region for 2013, there is an old Grand Prix circuit: Sables l’Orlonne. Looks like I may have to pay homage.