Champion Year: Mike Hawthorn

Recalling childhood dreams…

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Juan: Remember this book by Mike Hawthorn? You gave it to me to read when we were in primary school.

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Jean-Étienne: He was our hero of the late 50s. Back then, we wanted to be Formula 1 racing drivers.

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Juan: Tragic though. He won the world championship in 1958. Wrote his book, Champion Year, handed it in to the publishers, and died in a road crash three weeks later in January 1959. Aged 29.

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Jean-Étienne: An odd thing was that he’d had a kidney removed and the other one was on the blink and doctors only gave him a few months to live.

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Voice-over

Motor racing was different then. Somehow more sporting, less commercial. Racing cars looked more beautiful than today. But more dangerous, too. Every year race car drivers died in crashes. Poorly designed race tracks, no seatbelts, fires. Mike Hawthorn’s best friend, race driver Peter Collins, had died months before during the 1958 German Grand Prix.

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