THE GLORY OF FERRARI
No racing team – maybe no team of any kind – exert so powerful a hold over their fans’ emotions as do Ferrari. Richard Williams explores the myth and magic that make the Scuderia so compelling
Richard Williams explores the myth and magic behind this special team
Alberto Ascari Dorino Serafini Raymond Sommer Luigi Villoresi José Froilán González Piero Taruffi Peter Whitehead Giuseppe Farina André Simon Piero Carini Mike Hawthorn Umberto Maglioli Robert Manzon Maurice Trintignant Eugenio Castellotti Paul Frère Harry Schell Peter Collins Juan Manuel Fangio Olivier Gendebien Luigi Musso André Pilette Alfonso de Portago Cesare Perdisa Wolfgang von Trips Phil Hill Cliff Allison Jean Behra Tony Brooks Dan Gurney Richie Ginther Willy Mairesse Ricardo Rodriguez Giancarlo Baghetti Lorenzo Bandini Ludovico Scarfiotti John Surtees Nino Vaccarella Mike Parkes Chris Amon Jonathan Williams Jacky Ickx Andrea de Adamich Derek Bell Pedro Rodríguez Ignazio Giunti Clay Regazzoni Mario Andretti Nanni Galli Arturo Merzario Niki Lauda Carlos Reutemann Gilles Villeneuve Jody Scheckter Didier Pironi Patrick Tambay René Arnoux Michele Alboreto Stefan Johansson Gerhard Berger Nigel Mansell Alain Prost Jean Alesi Gianni Morbidelli Ivan Capelli Nicola Larini Michael Schumacher Eddie Irvine Mika Salo Rubens Barrichello Felipe Massa Kimi Räikkönen Luca Badoer Giancarlo Fisichella Fernando Alonso Sebastian Vettel
At any given grand prix in 2017, there’s a fair chance that 99 per cent of all those thousands of spectators wearing Ferrari-branded merchandise are never even going to have heard of Alberto
ASCARI,
the first Ferrari driver to finish on the podium at a championship grand prix. Yet this man, now buried next to his father beside a tree-lined path in Milan’s Cimiterio Municipale, is the foundation on which the Ferrari legend is based. Ascari finished second to Juan Manuel
Fangio, in an Alfa Romeo, at the 1950 Monaco Grand Prix, the second round of the inaugural series of the world championship, after half the field had been eliminated in an opening-lap pile-up. Among the unfortunate retirees were Fangio’s team-mates, Nino Farina and Luigi Fagioli, who would surely have climbed the podium alongside him had they not been caught up in one of the great carambolages in F1 history. It was an early stroke of good fortune for the infant Ferrari team, and by no means their last.
Luck has played a powerful role in the longrunning drama of the Scuderia. Good luck (and influential friends) have rescued them from the brink on more than one occasion, while its opposite provided a backdrop of tragedy and disappointment that served only to strengthen their uniquely compelling aura. But there would be no luck involved when Ascari guided his Ferrari Tipo 500 to the world title in 1952 and ’53, becoming the first man to win back-toback titles. His streak of nine consecutive race wins across those two seasons – if we discount the Indy 500, as we should – still stands, to be equalled only by Sebastian Vettel 60 years later.
It’s true that the competition during Ascari’s title-winning years, which spanned the short-lived twolitre era of Formula 1, was not the most intimidating. Maserati, Ferrari’s local rivals, had Fangio, but were on the back foot technically. The French and British entries from Gordini, Alta, Cooper, Connaught, HWM and others lacked muscle, while the return of Mercedes-benz was still only a rumour. But those were the seasons – following closely on victories for Ferrari sportscars at the Mille Miglia, the Targa Florio and Le Mans – in which the cars bearing the black prancing horse on the yellow shield began to achieve their eventual status as a symbol not just of the Italian racing scene, or of grand prix racing, but of motor racing as a whole.
The legend of Ferrari is about the cars, certainly, from the mighty 4.5-litre 375 in which José Froilan González beat the Alfas at Silverstone in 1951, to Sebastian Vettel’s current SF70H. It’s also about the people who designed and built them, and it is very much about founder Enzo Ferrari, who cultivated an enigmatic façade that is still in place 30 years after his death. Above all, though, it is about the line of drivers that began with Ascari and continues all the way to Vettel – the latest to grapple with the special pressures and responsibilities (obligations, you might say) of driving a Ferrari.
With the exception of the years from 2000-2004, in which Michael
Schumacher took five consecutive titles, Ferrari have never been invincible. And it’s the combination of vulnerability and persistence that explains their unique appeal. Michael Schumacher endured four years of hard graft and only the occasional glimmer of success before winning titles. Fernando Alonso lacked the patience and humility to see it through to the successful conclusion that history suggests would otherwise have awaited him. Like Schumacher, he arrived having won two titles with another team, but couldn’t wait to have more. Through that failure, however, he too became part of the legend: an example of how, in the end, Ferrari determines a driver’s destiny, rather than vice versa.
Alonso’s falling out with the team is a reminder of the way Enzo Ferrari sometimes reacted to his drivers. He disliked Fangio, who had arrived from Mercedes in 1956 with three titles under his belt, and would win a fourth in part thanks to the altruism of his young teammate Peter Collins, who handed over his car and a share of the points for second place at Monza. Fangio and his manager haggled with Ferrari over money and, having won the title,
the great Argentine turned his back and left for Maserati. This was his spiritual home and a warmer and more accommodating environment, but Maserati lacked the business acumen and ability to make tough decisions and would be out of Formula 1 a year later.
Mike Hawthorn was Ferrari’s third world champion, and Britain’s first. His triumph came in the wake of a succession of tragedies: Ascari, Eugenio Castellotti, Alfonso de Portago,
Luigi Musso and Collins all perished at the wheel of Ferraris between 1955 and 1958. The Portago crash, at the 1957 Mille Miglia, took the lives of nine spectators, five of them children, prompting calls from the Vatican (seven years after the team, returning from a victorious campaign in Argentina, had been received by Pope Pius XII) for Ferrari to be prosecuted. Drivers had already been killed in the post-war years while at the wheel of other makes – Achille Varzi in an Alfa, Jean-pierre Wimille in a Gordini, Raymond Sommer in a Cooper, Onofre EXTREME SPEED, FLAIR AND CONSPICUOUS COURAGE Marimón in a Maserati, for example. But it was the Ferrari flag that bore the most indelible bloodstains, further darkened in the 1960s when
Wolfgang von Trips’ 156 Sharknose killed 15 spectators along with its driver at Monza and when Lorenzo Bandini was burnt to death in his 312 at Monaco, both accidents taking place in front of the television cameras.
Was this gruesome coincidence, or did Enzo Ferrari foster a spirit of internal competition among his drivers that encouraged them to take greater and perhaps unnecessary risks? Certainly his cars, unlike those of some of his rivals, were never less than robust. But through these ordeals the Scuderia came to resemble Manchester United, for whom the Munich air crash of 1959 deepened the club’s hold on the public’s imagination, as did the excruciating wait for a league championship between 1967 and 1992. Ferrari’s own lengthy droughts – between
John Surtees in 1964 and Niki Lauda in 1975, and between Jody Scheckter in 1979 and TAZIONUVOLARI Michael Schumacher 21 years later – represented a sort of exquisite agony for both the team and their fans, a sensation of the kind they are experiencing again while awaiting the end of their current dry spell, which began after
Kimi Räikkönen’s title win ten years ago. A decade, of course, is nothing in the life of Ferrari. They have been a fixture in the world championship since the start, missing only a handful out of almost a thousand races since the series began in 1950. Unlike Mercedes, who have been blown in and out of the sport by corporate priorities, Ferrari are a guaranteed presence. And behind those decades of commitment are the ghosts of the interwar era, when Enzo Ferrari ran Alfas for such heroes of the golden age as the incomparable Tazio Nuvolari, his great rival Achille Varzi, the opera singer Giuseppe Campari and Antonio Ascari, Alberto’s father.
Whenever he was asked to nominate the greatest driver of all time, Enzo Ferrari would always unhesitatingly nominate Nuvolari, the Flying Mantuan, who embodied what came to be accepted as the qualities necessary for a real Ferrari driver: extreme speed, yes, but also flair and conspicuous courage. The Old Man could never give his wholehearted blessing to those who, like Varzi or Fangio, he saw as approaching the job in a spirit of excessive calculation. Which was, of course, why he loved Gilles Villeneuve, who won no championships but lit up the lives of spectators around the world, not least that of the old man who sat watching the races on television, surrounded by his cronies, relishing the sight of this young French-canadian driving the wheels off one of his precious machines, fighting with chivalry but never giving up.
At Zolder in 1982, Villeneuve became the last man to die at the wheel of a Ferrari F1 car, while embroiled in an internal spat with his team-mate, Didier Pironi: a replay of the classic Nuvolari-varzi rivalry, but with a tragic conclusion. Even now, 35 years on, you sometimes see a Ferrari banner bearing his number 27 at a race. And that’s the measure of the potency of the Ferrari legend, fed by the imperishable stories of those who gave it life.