In the 17th arrondissement in Paris there is a garage called Le Fair-Play. We’ll gloss over the fact it sells Volkswagens and concentrate for now on the concept. It is not a very French expression and, remarkably, was imported from English – because the French did have a word for sportsmanship.
Back in the 1960s there was an amusing musical comedy duo called Flanders and Swann. They sang clever songs including one called “The Song of Patriotic Prejudice”, which was amusingly rude about the other nations of the world and chorused with “The English, the English, the English are best. I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest”. It made people laugh, not because they took it seriously – but because they understood it was a satirical look at nationalism.
One of the verses was about sports.
“And all the world over each nation’s the same,” it went. “They’ve simply no notion of ‘Playing the game’. They argue with umpires, they cheer when they’ve won, and they practice beforehand – which ruins the fun.”
The point – now long forgotten – was that, for the English, sport was not about winning, but rather about the pleasure of competition, and if your opponent played well and won, one was generous and applauded the achievement. It was born from the respect between competitors.
There have been two outstanding examples of sportsmanship in the history of F1, although these were long before the sport was played to Schumacher Rules, where shoving a rival off the road is deemed to be the norm. The first was at Monza in 1956, in the final race of the season. Argentina’s Juan Manuel Fangio (45) was the favourite to win his fourth world title. His challenger was his Ferrari team-mate 25-year-old Englishman Peter Collins, who was in a position to become his country’s first Formula 1 World Champion.
Fangio had an eight point advantage which meant that Collins had to win the race and set the fastest lap – without Fangio scoring. So it was really down to reliability.
As luck would have it, Fangio retired with steering problems. In those days, teams were still allowed to switch their drivers between cars and so Ferrari asked its third driver Luigi Musso to hand his car over to Fangio. He refused to do so, on the grounds that he didn’t wish to disappoint his home crowd. This meant that Collins was on track for the title as he closed in on race leader Stirling Moss.
But then, with 15 laps to go, Collins slowed and drove into the pits. He handed the car over to Fangio, thus giving up any chance he had of winning the world title. Fangio rejoined, but could not catch Moss.
Collins said that Fangio was too great a driver to be let down by machinery, and added that he was still young and would win a title soon enough. Alas, that did not happen. Two years later Peter Collins died in an accident at the Nürburgring.
Three weeks after Collins’s death, the Formula 1 teams gathered again for the Portuguese GP on the streets of Porto. The battle for the World Championship that year was between Moss in a Vanwall and Mike Hawthorn in a Ferrari. It was wet on the day of the race and Moss and Hawthorn fought for the lead, until Hawthorn spun and ended up on a pavement, off the race track. The car stalled. When Moss came around on his next lap, he shouted to Hawthorn to try to bump-start the car, by letting it roll down the hill behind where the Ferrari had stopped. This worked, Hawthorn rejoined and finished second to Moss. After the race, the stewards decided to exclude Hawthorn because he had driven the wrong way on the race track. Moss heard the news, went to see the stewards, argued that Hawthorn had not been on the track and should not be disqualified. They reversed the decision and Hawthorn was given back his second place. Two races later Hawthorn won the title from Moss by just one point… thanks to Stirling’s sense of fair play.
Please think about donating to the Jill Saward Fund, which aims to continue the work of my sister Jill Saward (1965-2017), who campaigned to help rape victims and to reduce the number of rapes in the world.
joeblogsf1 
an excellent bit Joe! I just wonder how do You pick the themes every day every so different, one day the criminals, next day the philanthropies. Is it planned or accidental ?
Whatever falls out of my head
Fascinating F1 fact about hair coming soon?
Joe you need to get a high end folio/coffee table book of Motor Racing facts ready for Christmas 2017. It will sell 👍
Yes please.
No Joe, not a book, but a Calendar with a new rip of every week with a new fact for 2018… now that would sell
OK both. A calendar and a coffee table book 👍
Good sportsmanship is taught fairly universally in American schools–my son had to sign a contract specifying he would abide by its principles before he could compete on his high school swim team. I had to sign also! Origins in our British roots, probably.
Cue the anti-American rhetoric, I suppose…
BTW the Jill Saward Fund is at 78% of goal, only £4406 left to go–let’s push it over!
(Remember if you’re in the States, every dollar is worth about 1.26 pounds.)
Actually Jon, I hate to be a pedant, but at today’s exchange rate, 1USD equates to .7875GBP. I think you just got your $’s & £’s mixed up as that means you’d need to spend $1.27 to donate £1. Still very much worth donating as much as you can though.
Whilst I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment and intent, I have to point out that the pound is still worth more than the dollar so you have to give $1.26 to make £1. This will fluctuate wildly as Brexit approaches. But it may drop a lot at the end of March this year.
I did erroneously state that backwards but I meant to impart that us Yanks should donate more than we might otherwise think to help make it to the target…
Joe, you say Schumacher rules, I thought that a man with your knowledge and integrity would not of forgot that it was Senna that set the precedent!
No it wasn’t. It was Prost. If you knew the story, you would know that Prost’s action was the trigger for Senna’s response, a year later, which he believed was justice. Given that Prost’s action was fairly out of character, and executed in an amateur fashion, you will understand why I used the expression I used.
I’m always staggered with the comments made about Senna, when you consider what Prost did. The helicopter shot shows just how early he turned in. The first F1 title won by taking out you opponent, I believe.
Now watch Joe prove me hopelessly wrong, rank amateur that I am! 😛
Yes. All true. The people who don’t like Senna conveniently forget the back story to the 1990 crash.
Not to mention Balestre’s part in the stitch up, of course.
True
I remember Keke Rosberg asking if he thought that Prost had done it deliberately. He said “of course”. He then added “you can tell that he doesn’t do it very often because he did it so badly”. Which tells us a lot about a generation of drivers.
Completely agree. I believe helicopter footage exists, which was in one of the Senna films, showed Prost turned in before the apex into the chicane.
Senna overtook Nanninni into the chicane a few laps later in similar manner which highlighted this.
Added to this was Balestre getting involved to crown a French champion. This abuse of power so enraged Max Mosley that he ran for FIA President the following year.
I know Schumacher perfected the art but do the roots lie with Senna or even Post at the chicane at Suzuka?
Yes, Schumacher rules… I would have enjoyed the racing in the 50’s much more it seems…
Martin, I suspect you would also have enjoyed the racing more in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, we certainly did. Thank you Joe for highlighting the sportsmanship of two of my favourite drivers.
The only problem was all the deaths – must have been miserable. One of my earliest F1 memories is Ronnie Petersen dying which was awful.
Repeatedly when you talk to Americans they miss completely the point of this comment, seeing it as some kind of genetic weakness in the British who enjoy participation more than winning. It is as you say and unfortunately this now gets lost on the mists of huge money stakes professional sport.
Professional sport is only possible because of those who watch, they are not involved in but living vicariously through those that do. The PR chaparones, the no criticism contracts and efforts to prevent drivers expressing themselves in any way, even through their helmets, detract from the supporters being able to see and feel the pleasure of competition. It is a shame because when competitors break through thiose barriers, the supporters are always more engaged in the pleasure of competition….
It’s all down to conscience. Some follow it, some transgress occasionally and regret and some ignore it until Life catches up with them.
Great stories Joe. As “someone” once said “The world is full of heroism………”
“Mud, mud, glorious mud nothing quite like it for cooling the blood”……courtesy Flanders and Swan……..
Hold very tight please!
As you may know, Michael Flanders’ daughter Stephanie used to be Economics editor at the BBC.
You are wonderfull, Joe. All the posts you writeare caviar spoonfulls… You may some day come back in 17th Arrondissement, as it is the best place in Paris to speak about english sports cars, thanks to Jacques Savoye and Gérard Crombac…
Keep on being what you are, you are a realy nive and precious person and soul.
Faithfully yours
I go there often!
But don’t be caught singing that other F&S classic, “All Gall”
Joe I am a little wary of the suggestion that fair play is exclusively English or British. Was not Fangio himself renowned as a gentleman and at least as fair a sportsman as anyone? Off hand, I seem to recall his being associated with similar incidents to those you mention.
True that Schumacher led the opposite charge, and all his achievements are overshadowed as a result, at least in the eyes of some of us.
Believe it or not, gentlemanly drivers do still exist in F1. Worth noting in this regard are two Finns: Hakkinen [1990s] and Raikkonen [still current]. They may not ever hand their car over to a rival, but you sense they would surely hate as hell to cheat or lie.
I didn’t say it was exclusively British. I said that the concept came from Britain. Nor did I discount other sporting gestures, I merely pointed out two which affected the World Championship. The fact that both involved British drivers may or may not indicate something. Generally I agree about the Finns but Kimi Russia 2015 did not look like a mistake to me…
Hello Joe,
as a Belgian who first went to a GP to see Jacky Ickx, I dare saying that you forgot to mention “Monsieur Le Mans” not wanting to take away the Championship from Jochen Rindt in 1970. I don’t recall the details but I remember my dad saying how “fair play” that was.
Well, he won in Canada, and was running second in the U.S. when he suffered a fuel leak and dropped to 12, but then raced back to fourth does not suggest this. His championship hopes were gone after the U.S. race, but he went on to win in Mexico as well. That doesn’t really seem like he wasn’t trying…
Welöl said, Joe. Ickx was certainly trying, but I remember him saying things like that: ‘ I’m happy Jochen won the Championship and not me, for he deserves it more than me’. However that was after he failed to win the title, not before the US race, a fine but decisive difference.
Rindt was Lotus driver and Ickx drove for Ferrari. I believe that personally he did not really want to win the title by ‘stealing’ it from deceased Rindt, but was professional enough to do the best he could for his team/employer.
Having attended my first Grand Prix as recently as 58 years ago, and reported F1 events for only 46 years, I have more sense than to intervene in the fractious argument about the respective rôles of Prost and Senna in the descent of motor racing into an indignant morass of unsporting behaviour. However, I got to know them both men quite well. I first interviewed Alain in 1979, when we found ourselves chatting uninterrupted in a Derbyshire pub for more than an hour, and early in 1984 I was able to spend 24 congenial hours in the company of Ayrton at his family’s home in São Paulo (his mum invited me to spend the night).
For a deeper insight into the clash of personality between the two titans, I commend to all of Joe’s readers the two books about them written by our colleague Maurice Hamilton for Blink Publishing. There’s a perceptible tendency in both volumes to pull punches on the more sensitive aspects of their personalities (unsurprising when you know that the works were commissioned by McLaren), less so in the events that led up to the collision at Suzuka in 1989.
The material gathered by Hamilton is especially valuable because he was given unrestricted access to the McLaren personnel who lived and worked with the two drivers on a day-by-day basis. He also spoke at depth with Prost. I invite readers to study these books, which contain almost all of the material on which any dispassionate evaluation of these two titans must be made.
While I join with Joe in deploring the disappearance from our sport of ‘le fair-play’ (don’t you love the hyphen added by the French?), I am sure that if a modern-day driver were to go soft on a rival as Moss did with Hawthorn at Portugal in 1958, there would be a long line of sponsors, sporting directors and fans wishing to disabuse him of the folly of throwing away hard-won championship points.
But then it seems to me that fair play is no longer seen as a virtue, whether it be in sport or in public life. In my own country, various muddle-headed politicians have recently taken it upon themselves, in an important public debate, wilfully to deny the clearly expressed will of the people by using the most weaselly of manufactured excuses. It is indeed deplorable.
Fair play is about respect for others. It is a measure of a man how he takes it when he loses.
Felipe Massa showed himself to be a real man, above certain whingers and cheaters, in the way he accepted his loss of the 2008 title and he took it as fair play after he had done all that could be asked of him in the race in Brazil.
Very true. That was a great display of sportsmanship.
Pity the same couldn’t be said in regards his comments against Alonso after Crash gate hit the headlines..
Which is fully understandable, for he was easily in control of the race until Renault ordered Piquet to crash.
I once read about how Stirling was asked, years after his great act of sportsmanship in Porto, why he had done it, when he was the only witness who could have possibly known Hawthorn’s manoeuvre was legitimate. With a certain amount of exasperation at the question, Stirling responded “but that’s exatly the point – I *would* have known!”
I can’t remember absolutely now, but I’m pretty sure I read this exchange in the aftermath of either Adelaide ’94 or Jerez ’97 and what Stirling was saying was that he could not have derived any satisfaction in his own mind for a championship which he would know not to have been won fairly, even if no-one else knew it. We can but guess whether those of his successors many years later, who at least in public appeared to derive satisfaction more easily from ill-gotten wins, knew the same thing as Stirling when they looked themselves in the mirror…
You are so right, I also remember Stirling saying that lying is so un-british. However times changed and there is so much money in the game, that there is hardly a driver on the track who would not try to exploit every advantage he can get, even at the cost of fairness.
Joe wrote:
‘There have been two outstanding examples of sportsmanship in the history of F1, although these were long before the sport was played to Schumacher Rules, where shoving a rival off the road is deemed to be the norm’.
As an observer who hardly missed watching a race since the seventies, I would say it was already in the years before Schumacher that fairness was lost, especially with the appearance of Senna.
I do not agree and I have been around for the same sort of time. For me, Senna was a man of principle.
Mossy won the ’58 Portugese GP by a long way and was actually coming up to lap Hawthorn, and Hawthorn saw a green Vanwall in his mirrors, mistook it for third-place Lewis-Evans and spun from trying too hard. Hence Moss was on his slowing-down lap and could could afford the time to tell Hawthorn not to push his car uphill on the track, but downhill on the pavement.
Moss notoriously mis-read his pit signal and didn’t know Hawthorn had got fastest lap, or he would have gone fast enough to regain it and thus won the championship by that 1 point…..
Perhaps it’s not quite on the scale of the Collins and Moss gestures, but didn’t Gilles Villeneuve refuse to pass Jody Scheckter when he could have done so and become world champion? And wasn’t that why he was so angered when Pironi did just that to him?
Oh, my goodness, I hate to toss a bit of cold water of this nice tale, but…
The Collins gesture at Monza in 1956 is perhaps best seen as more of a jingoistic myth used to perpetuate the notion of the supremacy of English/British sportsmanship than a reflection of the reality of the situation that actually existed that day. While it is perhaps true that Peter Collins had a mathematical possibility of capturing the world championship, it would require both winning the race and setting the fastest lap, something certainly possible, but not necessarily probable given that it depended upon the (faint) hope that Fangio did not increase his score (the Argentine had already scored in the maximum number of events until the current system) with another win, as well as Behra, Moss, and the others on the grid also having bad days.
Although both Fangio and Behra encountered various problems and dropped out of the race, the machine Collins was driving was not performing well during the race, in part thanks to the Englebert tires that Scuderia Ferrari were using and in part to others, Moss and Musso, in particular, simply having better — and in Moss’ case, luckier — races. When Collins handed over his car to Fangio, he was in third place and Moss had set the fastest lap to capture that point necessary for Collins to ensure capturing the championship. Only Musso finally suffering a broken steering arm several laps from the end allowed the Collins/Fangio car into second place behind the Maserati of Moss.
So, even before Collins gave up his seat to Fangio, any real hope of becoming the world champion were already quite remote. Had Collins persevered and Moss not gotten the push by Piotti and run out of fuel on the track and with Musso crashing thanks to the broken steering arm, both events then allowing Collins to win the race, there was still the issue of the fastest lap: could Collins have set a lap faster than that of Moss? Possibly, but there is also he could have stressed the car and retired while attempting to do so, negating the point of the effort.
Nice story, wonderful gesture, but not necessarily what happened (although as a schoolboy at the time, I certainly believed it to be the case, true as told).
As Maxwell Scott states at the end of The Man Who Shot Libetry Valance — When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
And evidence?
Mr. Saward,
In response, I would ask you to provide any evidence (which is currently absent) to the contrary as to what I have suggested as being more likely the case than merely repeating the usual recitation of the legend that you have presented. Have you actually taken the time to consider what was offered or, as Maxwell Scott might suggest, simply uncritically accepted the legend as being true and not willing to accept any other interpretation of the event? Does the addition of historical context to the action of Collins demean, as you seem to imply, the nobility of his action? Given that this was taking place within the literal heat of the moment and based upon what Collins may have known at that moment, I think not. However, be that as it may, it is still a better legend than a reflection of what actually occurred.
As historians, we present interpretations of questions we pose based upon our research and analysis of the topic, a process that can be quite time-consuming and involved, to say nothing of frustrating at times. When others presented challenges to the accepted view of the Collins action at the 1956 Monza race, I was uncertain as to what to think, given that this tale was so firmly entrenched and so widely accepted. However, once I decided to question the event, I found that once as I began to develop the contextual aspects of the race and the decision which was made by Collins, there were factors which were often either left out or simply glossed over in the many retelling of the tale. Reading and examining the contemporary reports and lap charts and then looking at the other material, then, as mentioned, considering the later versions of the story, it was clear that once the action was placed within this context, that what Collins did was, ultimately, unnecessary for Fangio to retain his championship. Whether you or anyone else refuses to accept this interpretation is, of course, of little to no consequence unless you or others can provide an alternative interpretation based upon something more substantial than merely relying on the Maxwell Scott edition of history.
So, respectfully, awaiting the presentation of your evidence and subsequent interpretation.
Historians often reinterpret the available facts differently, or they apply the logic of their age to a time when no such thinking existed and create theories that sound plausible but which are ultimately flawed because that is not how people thought at the time. They then spend their time having spats with other historians who construct different stories to fit the available facts. It is intellectual masturbation. So, in response to your comment, yes over time I have looked at different reports, in more than one language, and I have examined what happened. I have found no reason to reinterpret the story. No, I did not spend weeks and months poring over unearthed scrolls. Maybe I have missed something, maybe you have seen things that were not there. Who knows? It’s easy to say it was a pointless thing to do, but why then did he do it? In that era, one never knew if your car or that of your rivals would not suddenly have a problem and the story would change. So running second and needing to win was not the hopeless situation it would be today in an age when things rarely break down. The hope was still there. Races were regularly won and lost in such a fashion and it did not undermine the achievement. To voluntarily give up the possibility of victory was therefore a noble gesture, and one that Fangio understood for what it was. If the decision was unnecessary, as you surmise, why then did he do what he did? Did he just give up because he felt he couldn’t win? That is not the normal reaction of a fierce competitor. And why did Fangio so appreciate what had been done? Perhaps there were ulterior motives that you have concluded were there, perhaps not. Ultimately, this is the failure of history as an intellectual exercise: one never knows what really happened and thus it descends into historiography and ego tussles among the historians. This is why I gave up the idea of being a professional historian because I concluded that ultimately it was just guessing and facts were either in short supply or were always open to interpretation. The quibbling that occurs is actually a negative thing because it drives away the interested and the curious. The aim of this series of Fascinating articles is to fascinate and to inspire fans to learn about the rich and colourful past of the sport, not to speculate and expound new theories, which may or may not be true.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…
Mr. Saward,
Please accept my most humble apologies and I beg, beseech you to excuse and somehow try to forgive my unworthy behavior for even thinking, much less openly daring to suggest the blasphemy that there is any possible, even conceivable, notion that scholarly historians might have a role in the history of automotive competition.
To question orthodoxy is treason.
Everything I wrote regarding Peter Collins was a lie, written in a moment of great weakness, forgetting that historians only distort and confuse and guess about the past, confusing and upsetting people, Thought Crime of the highest order.
I accept that 2 + 2 = 5.
Your most humble & obedient servant,
Winston Smith
What a strange response
Joe: passed the link of this post to a friend who, in turn passed it on to a friend of his. Below I’ve quoted the response he sent to both of us which I feel blends in very well with the contents of your column. Perhaps the most surprising fact is that all this comes from a racing fan from way down in Argentina, where all three of us live!
“I’ve never been much of a hero-worshipper, but Peter Collins really fostered my interest in car racing, as did Stirling. They were real “Boys’ Own” characters in their time, charging off overseas to face the best at the world’s top circuits, while managing to remain as two “good sports” at the same time, as these two stories written by Joe well reflect.
Not sure if you know that St Mary’s Church (with a very small congregation nowadays) in the village of Stone (near Kidderminster, where Peter was born and grew up) is the only church in the world that has one of its stained glasses/vitraux with a checkered flag on it (see attached picture). Peter is buried in the churchyard. I am fortunate that a friend lives a half- hour from the church and he places a rememberance card on my part there every August 3rd.
The second picture refers to THAT moment in which Peter suddenly brought his Lancia D50-Ferrari into the team’s pits and offered it Fangio, who gave him a kiss and drove away to seal his 4th World Championship. Fangio can be seen at the side of the car, waiting to hop in.
In what refers to Stirling’s sporting gesture after the 1958 Portuguese GP, I might add that the way he finally convinced the Portuguese race authorities that afternoon to not DQ his rival Hawthorn was that, this being a street layout, when Hawthorn had driven his car against the oncoming cars, he had done so on one of the street’s sidewalks, so technically his car was off the track itself.
The third picture shows the pub near Kidderminster where Peter used to gather with his mates between races. On one of its walls hangs a framed drawing I sketched out and which I sent to the pub’s owner, showing Peter at the wheel of a Lancia D50-Ferrari at the Curva de Ascari, during the 1957 Argentinian GP.”
l
Great article/blog save for the ” long before the sport was played to Schumacher Rules, where shoving a rival off the road is deemed to be the norm.” The rot set in before Shumacher with the on track antics of one Ayrton Senna in my view.
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Point taken regarding the Prost/Senna incidents of ’89/’90 at Suzuka however from memory I don’t remember any driver before Senna deliberately forcing his rivals(not just Prost) off the track or intimidating opponents the way that he did. He was a flawed genius. I may well be wrong but in my opinion his forceful track behaviour changed the way that F1 driving standards are viewed, Michael Schumacher took it to a whole new level; the manoeuvre on his team mate Barrichello at Hockenheim was absolutely shameful.