Speed Reads: The Limit by Michael Cannell

There are not many great books written about motorsports. Its unfortunate because stick and ball sports like baseball and football have their great writers and great reads, but there just are not that many when it comes to racing. 

The Limit: Life and Death of the 1961 Grand Prix Circuit by Michael Cannell focuses on the lives of Phil Hill and Baron Wolfgang von Trips through 1961 when the men challenged for the Formula 1 Drivers' Championship while both driving for Ferrari. 

Cannell is a writer for the New York Times. He says in the acknowledgments that he does not own a car and does not particularly like driving. He became interested in this era of racing when he was given a book of racing photographs. Cannell's last book was a biography of architect I.M. Pei. 

Cannell portrays Hill and von Trips as polar opposites in terms of driving and personality. Both men grew up in relatively wealthy families. Hill's father was a postmaster general in Santa Monica, California, and his mother wrote church hymns. He had a rich aunt who owned a Pierce Arrow who allowed him to drive it.

Other than that, his childhood was hellish. His parents were very strict, and it had an effect on Hill's personality for his entire life. Today, Hill would probably be diagnosed as on the Autism spectrum. He suffered from incredible nerves and was very quiet. His two loves were mechanics and music. When other drivers were out partying, Hill was at the opera or listening to classical music on a reel-to-reel tape player that we took with him everywhere.

Hill would often annoy the Italian mechanics working on the Ferraris by looking over their shoulders and correcting what they were doing. He was able to take the extreme nervousness that he had before every race and channel into being one of the best racing drivers of his generation when he was on the track.

Hill began as a hot rodder and worked as a mechanic during the day. He slowly transitioned from midget, and then he apprenticed in England with Rolls-Royce and Jaguar as a mechanic. He came back with a Jaguar XK120 and started sports car racing. When his parents died while he was still in his early 20s, Hill used his inheritance to buy a Ferrari and went racing.

Baron Wolfgang von Trips is almost the exact opposite. His father, the elder Baron von Trips, was written out of the family will when he married Wolfgang's mother who was the daughter of a city official from Bonn. However, von Trips retained the castle and land that it was on and the family turned the estate into a farm. Where Hill's young life was tumultuous, von Trips's was easy. His family loved him very much and spoiled him in his young life. He was a very sickly child though suffering from an undiagnosed case of diabetes or hypoglycemia for his entire life. He passed out multiple times while driving from low sugar when he was young.

Cannell has a difficult time squaring the von Trips family's life with World War 2. Von Trips was a member of the Hitler Youth and later Volksturm. He never fought in the war, and he and his father skipped out from the Volksturm when they were supposed to be digging fortifications. Cannell notes that many members of German royalty supported Hitler because they thought they would regain some of the land that they had lost after World War 1.

The post-war period was a hard for von Trips. His home was occupied by American and British soldiers. However, he bought a motorcycle and began racing, which led to the start of his motor sports career.

Von Trips and Hill both found their ways onto the Ferrari factory team in Formula 1, and in 1961 they were both challenging to be drivers' champion. Von Trips was chasing down Hill who was in third at Monza that year when he clipped Jim Clark. Von Trips died in the ensuing accident. 

In perhaps the book's weirdest anecdote, one that shows the odd occurrences in history. Von Trips imported two go-karts from Florida in 1959 with the intention of creating a go-kart track to train young, German drivers. In 1965, four years after von Trips's death, his mother opened the track near their home. The track was leased to Rolf Schumacher where his sons Michael and Ralf learned to race. 

The Limit is separated roughly into thirds covering Hill, von Trips, and from 1958 to 1961 when both men raced for Ferrari. The book has a pattern of introducing iconic drivers like Mike Hawthorn or Peter Collins, telling the reader how fantastic a driver that they were, and then explaining in detail the horrible details of their violent deaths. It highlights how dangerous racing was at this period.

If the book has a villain, it has to be Enzo Ferrari. Ferrari is portrayed as a petulant, unctuous old man who cared more about his cars than the drivers. In one scene, Hill has set up an interview with Ferrari with a journalist from the New York Times. Ferrari bemoaned seeing his cars crashed and mistreated, but even when asked basically said that the drivers did not matter. All of this is while Hill was sitting next to Ferrari during the interview.

The limit is a fantastic read. More period photographs would have helped shown the era better, and at times it can be confusing to understand when things are happening because Cannell only mentions the year during the start of each racing season. These are minor complaints, though. The book is extremely well researched with 24 pages of notes at the end citing sources and quotes.

Cannell's outsider perspective really helps the book's style. You do not have to know anything about the era to pick up the Limit and enjoy it.