Rallying

FERRARIS WEREN’T JUST SUCCESSFUL ON TRACK

IT SEEMS SO improbable: Ferrari showing form in rallying. Scroll back to the 1950s and it wasn’t uncommon for amateur drivers to enter Continental events, Kurt Zeller and Alois Willberger’s class win on the 1954 Tulip Rally aboard their Pinin Farinabodied 166 Berlinetta being among the more memorable successes. Yet three decades would elapse before matters took a turn for the serious, with Ferraris taking the fight to the established order in rounds of the European and World Rally Championships.

French dealer/entrant Charles Pozzi commissioned Michelotto of Padua to build the first Gp4 308 GTB rally car. Jean-Claude Andruet took a two-minute lead during the 1981 Tour de Corse, only to retire with a broken fuel pump. That same year, he won the Tour de France Automobile – matching his achievement in a Pozzi 365 GTB/4 Competizione nine years before.

In 1982, Andruet finished second on the Tour de Corse for Ferrari’s best-ever result on a round of the World Rally Championship. All told, 11 Group 4 308 GTBs were purportedly made, along with four further Group B evolutions, which featured a reworked version of the Quattrovalvole V8 – and were 30kg heavier than the first cars.

One of the more intriguing rally Ferraris was the 308 GTB built by Blackburn’s Tony Worswick. The mechanical engineer replaced his Hart-engined Escort with a ’76 example that was re-engineered in 1981 with support from Maranello Concessionaires. The bright yellow supercar was a regular fixture in the European Rally Championship from 1982 to 1986, and it still occasionally appears in Historic events. Once seen (and heard), it’s unlikely to be forgotten.