Behind the Wheel: Reliving Ferrari's Legendary Le Mans Journey with Luigi Chinetti

Ferrari had form having built a pair of twin-engined Bimotori Alfa Romeo racers in the mid-1930s and subsequently orchestrated and overseen designer Giaocchino Colombo’s voiturette Alfetta masterwork before a restructured Alfa Romeo brusquely claimed it as its own.

Disgruntled, and banned from using his name, Enzo then went his own way and constructed a pair of Fiat-based, straight-eight 1.5-litre sports cars under his Auto Avia Costruzioni banner, for a young Alberto Ascari and aristocratic Lotario Rangoni Machiavelli to drive in the 1940 Mille Miglia.

This immediate post-war proposal, however, was different: designer Colombo was convinced that Enzo planned to produce the 125 model (and its soon-to-appear variants) in significant numbers.

Progress was slow admittedly, materials being hard to come by – plus the moonlighting Colombo had been recalled by Alfa Romeo, leaving others to decipher his notes and sketches – but the 1.5-litre had at least first run on a dyno on 26 September 1946.

By 12 March 1947, it would be powering the rolling chassis sans bodywork that Enzo drove proudly through the gates at Maranello. Already winning minor national races by May, 2-litre Ferraris – customers had been quick to demand more power – driven by road-racing specialist Clemente Biondetti would within the next 12 months be victorious in the prestigious Targa Florio and Mille Miglia, the latter in a coupé no less.

None of this had anything to do with Chinetti.

He had been right, though – the first 166MM was sold to LA’s Tommy Lee following its appearance at the Turin Motor Show of September 1948 – and he knew how to prove it beyond doubt: that same month Chinetti scored Ferrari’s first major international win beyond Italy – the Montlhéry 12 Hours – in the Mille Miglia-winning 166 Spyder Corsa that he had persuaded British co-driver Lord Selsdon to buy.

By the year’s end that car had been shipped to Briggs Cunningham. The millionaire American entrepreneur/sportsman was hardly enamoured by its tired condition upon arrival, but with it he would score Ferrari’s first victory in the States, which in turn prompted him to order another; a faster, more powerful one.

Cunningham’s breakthrough win of May 1950 was achieved in a minor race on a Long Island airbase – but the sports car racing scene was burgeoning on America’s east and west coasts, and an exotic and tuneful Ferrari cut quite the dash among the home-built specials and sit-up-and-beg British machinery. Chicago’s Jim Kimberley wanted one, too – and bought the 166MM that Chinetti had used to win the 1949 Spa 24 Hours, co-driven by Jean Lucas.

But what had really sealed the deal for Ferrari in America – and thus the company’s long-term survival – was Chinetti’s win, a fortnight earlier, in the first Le Mans 24 Hours since the war.

The Grand Prix d’Endurance was the only race on Continental Europe that cut the mustard with the general audience Stateside; if you wanted to sell tens of dozens of Ferraris with hoods and roofs to enthusiastic drivers rather than just Spartan odds and sods to committed competitors, this was the one you had to win.

That’s why Chinetti drove for almost 23 hours – in the 1949 Mille Miglia-winning 166MM (Biondetti again) that he had persuaded Selsdon to buy and to share – to show in victory that Ferraris were rugged as well as fast and pretty.

Enzo was no fool. He would see what a similar success in 1951 did for Jaguar: Scuderia Ferrari would enter the race for the first time in 1952 and score its maiden win two years later.

Single-seaters would remain his first love, but, by the end of the decade, Le Mans had become his company’s most crucial race. That’s why number one driver John Surtees would bemoan the fact that the Scuderia’s Formula 1 programme only really got going after June; and that’s why Ford, seriously cheesed at being jilted by Ferrari, moved heaven and earth to win at Le Mans: all the better to kick Enzo’s butt, which eventually it did in 1966.

Not only had Ferrari’s prior period of domination – six consecutive wins from 1960 and seven from eight since 1958 – often been against minimal opposition – usually sister cars run by Chinetti’s North American Racing Team and driven (as though they had stolen them) by one or both of the Rodríguez brothers – but also he was fortunate to have the world’s best long-distance pairing on his books for much of that time.

Eloquent polymaths Phil Hill and Olivier Gendebien were far removed from his preferred Garibaldini gung-ho risk-takers – Enzo was sniffy about the American and Belgian in his memoir – but their refusal to play this agitator of men’s divide-and-conquer game, allied to their assured speed, brought Scuderia Ferrari three Le Mans victories. They had been leading comfortably in 1959, too, when the car let them down; and unfathomably they were split up in 1960 – Gendebien winning, co-driven, speedily and assuredly, by eloquent polymath Paul Frère.

“Among Ferrari’s nine outright Le Mans wins was a slew of PR-friendly GT successes too”

Among Ferrari’s eventual nine outright wins – during which there was a slew of PR-friendly GT category successes, too – was the last for a front-engined car (1962) and the first for a rear-engined (1963). The latter was also notable as being the first all-Italian win, thanks to Lorenzo Bandini and Ludovico Scarfiotti.

Ford rumbled into town in 1964 and was humbled – Ferrari prototypes finishing 1-2-3 – and those FoMoCos would suffer another loss of face the following year. Not that the Scuderia had covered itself in glory.

“Ferrari and Chinetti were good for each other, but could hardly be called friends”

The massed ranks of works Fords and Ferraris having cancelled each other out, the unlikely lead duel of 1965 boiled down to a pair of privateer 250LMs. Scuderia Ferrari representatives requested that Chinetti slow his down, preferring that Ecurie Francorchamps, running on works-contracted Dunlops rather than Goodyears, should win. Chinetti refused – not that his Garabaldini Jochen Rindt and Masten Gregory would have listened to him in any case! The result was a 1-2 that brought little cheer to Maranello.

Enzo and Chinetti were good for each other but could hardly be called friends.

Incredibly Ferrari has not won (on outright distance) since: Ford dramatically upped the stakes; Porsche gambled almost everything to break its duck; and Matra-Simca simply had to win pour la gloire. All three threw their kitchen sinks at it. Ferrari was in a different place by then. Like long-since departed Jaguar, it had already created its Le Mans legend.

Its final assault before choosing to concentrate on increasingly commercial Formula 1 – it neither needed to nor could do both properly any longer – ended in honourable defeat: all three of its prototypes leading at some point during a tooth-and-claw battle with Matra.

It’s a legacy untarnished by 50 years’ absence.

But with the automotive industry facing its greatest challenges/opportunities since WW2, the time is right for Ferrari to return. Victory – on the occasion of Le Mans’ centenary – would be the most far-reaching for this most charismatic of brands since Chinetti bust a gut to earn a buck.