During the 1958 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, whilst chasing Tony Brooks's Vanwall, Collins had a fatal crash. After pushing hard to keep pace, Collins went into the Pflanzgarten section of the circuit too quickly causing his Ferrari to run wide, encountering a ditch. Collins lost control of his car, it flipped into the air and landed upside down. Collins was thrown from the car and struck a tree, sustaining critical head injuries. Despite treatment Collins died later in the afternoon at a hospital in Bonn. His death was almost identical to the fate which his Ferrari teammate Luigi Musso suffered. Teammate Mike Hawthorn was so disturbed by Collins's death that he retired from racing immediately after winning the 1958 Drivers' Championship. Hawthorn himself died during the following year after an automobile accident on the A3 bypass near Guildford, Surrey, England. In Tony Brooks's autobiography, he recalled that he drove harder in that race, in the duel with Collins and Hawthorn, than at any other time in his life but, as in earlier duels with Fangio, the Ferrari pair were passing and repassing only on the safer North and South curves.