(The following came from one of the regular readers, but no indication of the origin – I have shortened it somewhat, but here goes!)
In 1919, a young Italian car mechanic and engineer named Enzo Ferrari took part in his first car race, a hill climb in Parma, Italy. He finished fourth. Ferrari was a good driver, but not outstanding, only winning 13 of his 47 starts.
In the mid-1920s, Ferrari retired from racing cars to begin building them instead. He took over the Alfa Romeo racing department in 1929 and began to turn out cars under his own name. Annoyed with Ferrari’s heavy-handed management style, which incidentally he continued until his death, Alfa Romeo fired him in 1939.
In 1947, what is considered as the first real Ferraris appeared on the market. That same year, Ferrari won the Rome Grand Prix, his first race as an independent carmaker. In 1949, a Ferrari won the Le Mans road race for the first time and in 1952 one of the team’s drivers, Alberto Ascari, became the world racing champion winning every race he entered that year.
These triumphs were followed by eight world championships and five Grand Prix championships. It is claimed that he was hiring the boldest, most daredevil drivers he could find. Between 1955 and 1965, six of Ferrari’s 20 drivers were killed in crashes and on five different occasions his cars careened into crowds of spectators, killing 50 bystanders in all.
Ferrari tended to scorn technological advances that he did not come up with himself, so he was slow to accept things like disc brakes, rear-mounted engines and fuel-injection systems. He is reported as having dismissed aerodynamics as something used by designers with underpowered engines!
By the time he died in 1988, Ferrari cars had won more than 4,000 races. Ferrari is the only constructor to have competed in every Grand Prix since 1950.
