Free Limit, The by Michael Cannell Page A

who race know that it is dangerous, but once we get the fever, we are satisfied with nothing else.”
    Hill lost the 1954 Carrera by twenty-four cumulative minutes, but winning three of nine legs and pressing Maglioli in anoutdated Ferrari counted as a win of sorts. The Mexican press called him El Batallador, the battler.
    Hill headed north with a sense of resolution and relief. For years he had agonized over what career to pursue—mechanic, driver, or something more conventional? “I was finally able to come to terms with myself and admit that racing was the profession I wanted to follow,” he said. It was a turning point. Now the question was how far could he go, and would he survive long enough to get there?

    Ambitious young drivers hoping to advance up the amateur ranks had one thing working in their favor: attrition by death. The racing squads run by European carmakers, known as works teams, needed a supply of fresh blood to replace the drivers who burned to death, snapped their necks, or catapulted into trees. All of which happened with alarming frequency in the days before seat belts, fireproof coveralls, and other safety concessions.
    Drivers talked about many things while they drank burgundy in cafés or waited in airport lounges—where to eat, practical jokes played on teammates, and, of course, the long-legged girls who followed them from race to race. They rarely talked about death. Whether they discussed it or not, they were acutely aware that roughly half of them would die in the coming seasons. The odds were grimmer than those their older brothers had faced in the war.
    The death rate was so high that the great Italian driver Alberto Ascari distanced himself from his two children so that they would not miss him when he died. “I don’t want them toget too fond of me,” he said. “One of these days I may not come back and they will suffer less if I have kept them a bit at arm’s length.” His only defense against death was the set of superstitions he faithfully followed.
    Ascari was a self-possessed Milanese with ample cheeks and hazel-blue eyes who came to the racetrack each morning in a coat and tie, as if preparing for a day of desk work. He first sat behind the wheel at age five, on the lap of his father, Antonio Ascari, who led the Alfa Romeo team when Enzo Ferrari broke into racing in the 1920s. Like his father, Alberto became a national hero, twice winning the Grand Prix championship for Ferrari. Italians followed his career the way Americans followed Joe DiMaggio. They affectionately called him Ciccio, or Chubby.
    The evening before the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix, Ascari watched a movie with Fangio and a few other drivers. Afterwards they walked a part of the circuit that zigzagged down the hilly principality overlooking the Mediterranean. When they came to a swerve leading onto the long harborfront straight, somebody said, “Whoever falters here, goes into the water.” Ascari touched wood. The next afternoon Ascari clipped a curb at that very spot, brushed an iron mooring bitt, and plunged into the harbor with a geyser of spray. Rescue divers stationed nearby dove in after him. After twenty agonizing seconds Ascari bobbed to the surface ringed by oily bubbles. When he found that he had come up without his pale blue helmet he sent a diver back down to retrieve it. The helmet was his good luck charm. He never raced without it. He was taken to the hospital with lacerations to the head, but he was otherwise unhurt.
    Four days later Ascari turned up at the track in Monza,where his friend and protégé Eugenio Castellotti had completed twenty-five test laps in a new Ferrari sports car they were to share in a 1,000-kilometer race. Most of what Castellotti knew about racing he had learned from Ascari. “Be calm,” Ascari had told him on practice runs. “Slip into the car like you were going for a normal drive, instead of at 120 mph. Put your