Ferrari Purosangue: why the 2170kg V12 crossover is no SUV

Acurious term, greatness. Some like to measure it in statistical terms alone, but naked numbers only ever tell a partial story – and sometimes not even that. Some Common examples? Stirling Moss never claimed a world championship, yet remains indisputably one of his craft’s finest ever exponents.

And Chris Amon should have a double-figure tally of championship grand prix victories to his name, but won none at all. Circumstance can be a fickle barometer.

Our purpose here was not to produce a list of Ferrari grand prix drivers with impeccably shiny CVs, but to dissect the team’s past and present racers and analyse what made them ‘greats’ in terms of influence, personality and, yes, achievements. It’s subjective rather than definitive, but we’d like to think it reflects the spirit of F1’s most celebrated institution.

John Surtees

March 2018. Sebastian Vettel wins the Australian GP as he commences another F1 title tilt, but his next championship might be tougher to conquer than others. It takes a Ferrari pit fumble to prevent Marc Márquez – signed to replace the retiring Kimi Räikkönen – becoming the first driver since Giancarlo Baghetti to win on his F1 world championship debut. Couldn’t happen? There is evidence to suggest otherwise…

John Surtees is forever tagged as the only man to have taken titles on two wheels and four, but it’s easy to overlook the seamless sparkle of his transition. Driving Ken Tyrrell’s Cooper in a Formula Junior race at Goodwood in March 1960, he finished second to Jim Clark at the first car meeting he’d ever attended. Surtees made his F1 World Championship debut later that year and took pole third time out in Portugal, where he led before oil leaked onto his brake pedal and caused him to go off. Natural speed was one asset, but so was the strength of character that led him to reject Colin Chapman’s offer of a full-time job as Jim Clark’s team-mate, following some contractual complications.

With hindsight that was an error, but he accepted a Ferrari offer for 1963 (having previously rejected such a deal) and took his first F1 championship win in the best possible way, defeating Clark at the Nordschleife.

Surtees spent only three full seasons with Ferrari and, yes, that 1964 world title owed a little to last-lap complicity from team-mate Lorenzo Bandini, but Germany ’63 was always there to underline his true mettle.

“It’s easy to overlook the seamless sparkle of Surtees’ transition”

He won at the ’Ring and Monza in 1965 and bounced back from serious injuries (from a Can-Am accident that September) to be fit for the next season. He retired in Monaco, but then won in Belgium… which proved to be a final Ferrari flourish. When team manager Eugenio Dragoni informed Surtees that he wouldn’t form part of the Le Mans line-up – information imparted at the track! – the Englishman tendered his resignation. That strength of character…

Surtees wasn’t merely one of Ferrari’s most distinguished drivers: he was one of the world’s most significant sportsmen.

Peter Collins

Historic Ferrari racing driver seated in a classic single-seater, wearing a vintage helmet and goggles. — Getty Images

It’s etched in legend as one of F1’s most noble gestures – Peter Collins standing down during the 1956 Italian GP, to hand his car to Ferrari team-mate and title rival Juan Manuel Fangio – but the facts are a little more prosaic. Collins was trailing Fangio by eight points ahead of the race and required assorted miracles for any chance of the title, but it was a fine sportsmanship nonetheless.

It was also voluntary: Ferrari had tried to impose team orders on Luigi Musso, but he wasn’t in the mood to relinquish a seat in his home grand prix and Collins filled the breach. It was behaviour that sat well with Enzo Ferrari – certainly more so than another slice of Collins spontaneity, just a few months later. Ferrari had no objection to his drivers’ sexual conquests, but preferred things to be casual. He regarded permanence as a potential distraction – one more reason to avert risk. When Collins married American actress Louise King early in 1957, it followed a whirlwind seven-day courtship.

He remained part of the fold, although it would be an indifferent campaign for Ferrari as Stirling Moss and Vanwall provided the main threat to the departed Fangio’s Maserati.

The new 246 Dino promised more for ’58, although a string of early-season retirements dented Collins’ title chances. At Silverstone, though, he proved untouchable. Perceived as the hare Ferrari required to break the fast but frequently fragile Vanwalls, Collins set off in front – and stayed there long after the engine of Moss’s Vanwall had turned its last. Team-mate and chum Mike Hawthorn had a more realistic title shot, but he was a long way adrift in second and no attempt was made to slow the leader – a decision rendered more poignant with hindsight.

Two weeks later, at the Nürburgring, Collins was again a key cog as the Ferraris disputed the lead with Tony Brooks’ fleet Vanwall. On the 11th of 15 laps, however, he ran slightly wide at Pflanzgarten and clipped a bank. The car flipped up, rolled over a hedge and Collins was thrown out.

He never regained consciousness, and the sport lost a charismatic cavalier.

Sebastian Vettel

Didn’t appear in this feature originally, but swiftly made his mark on the Scuderia when he joined in 2015. After four-straight world titles with Red Bull, his reputation took a bit of a hit in ’14 when he was outpaced by Daniel Ricciardo during the first instalment of F1’s hybrid era. A timely switch to Ferrari yielded victory second time out, in Malaysia, and he has since served up several reminders of why he deserves to be remembered for far more than simply ‘winning in the best car’ – a simplistic untruth that overlooks the way he mastered the technique required to get the best from Adrian Newey’s blown floors… or the fact he is the only driver to have won in a Toro Rosso (Pierre Gasly won in a rebranded AlphaTauri).

As with all racing greats, driving quickly absorbs only a fraction of his mental capacity – something apparent every time he overruled those on the pit counter and starts directing race strategy from the cockpit (it happened several times in 2016, after flaky calls had cost him potential victories in both Melbourne and Montréal).

Those who worked with him at Red Bull cite a petulant streak that rarely surfaced in public. It was there for all the world to see when he (wrongly) thought Lewis Hamilton had brake-tested him in Baku, his retaliatory shove unbecoming of any driver – let alone one of his status. But then the greats are sometimes flawed, too.

Alain Prost

Ferrari racing driver with curly dark hair wearing a red Ferrari racing suit, photographed in close-up. — Getty Images

Driven from his once comfortable McLaren berth in the fractious slipstream of assorted spats with Ayrton Senna, he arrived in Nigel Mansell’s lair – and promptly made it his own. It took the politically astute polyglot about five minutes…

Despite an encouraging start – victory second time out, in Brazil, and another four subsequently – the campaign would be remembered as much for its tetchiness as its triumphs. Towards the season’s end, in Portugal, Mansell almost put the Frenchman in the pit wall after making a complete Horlicks of his start from pole. And two races later, with Prost on the back foot in the title fight at Suzuka, Senna took the law into his own hands. The Brazilian qualified on pole, which back then was on the dirtier part of the track, and urged the stewards to switch him to the other side for the sake of meritocracy. He had a point, as Prost illustrated by leading away from second, although he made it only as far as the first corner before his nemesis harpooned him and reduced both cars to rubble. Game, set and championship.

Prost’s victory in Spain, one race earlier, proved to be his last for the Scuderia. The 1991 campaign – alongside Jean Alesi, who signed for about half the paddock before finally settling on Ferrari – was comparatively mediocre, with a string of podium finishes (but none on the top step). When the Frenchman mentioned that the 642 was more Foden than Ferrari, red car morphed into red card and Gianni Morbidelli was hired for the seasonal finale in Adelaide.

In its bright new future without Prost, the team recorded just two GP victories during the next four seasons. The Frenchman took a sabbatical, came back for a single year with Williams and won seven…

Tony Brooks

Understated, underrated… such is the Tony Brooks way. His was only a fleeting partnership with Ferrari, racing the arrow-quick 246 against the new-fangled efficacy of Cooper’s rear-engined T51, but seven world championship starts yielded five finishes, four of them on the podium. He began his title challenge with a worthy second place in Monaco, despite being physically sick at the wheel during the event’s course, then won at both Reims and AVUS.

Between those victories, there should have been another splendid opportunity in the British GP at Aintree, where earlier in the campaign Jean Behra (using a newer engine, worth about 15bhp) and Brooks had finished first and second for Ferrari in the non-championship BARC 200. In July, though, with Brooks trailing Jack Brabham by five points in the standings, Ferrari withdrew its entry, citing a metal workers’ strike in Italy (an excuse proffered, allegedly, in the slipstream of disputes about starting money). In any event, Scuderia Centro Sud – also distinctly Italian – managed to get there. Brooks was offered the use of a Vanwall, which dropped out with a misfire, and Brabham extended his points advantage.

Ferrari let Brooks down more conventionally in Italy, where the 246 suffered clutch failure at the start, and he went to the Sebring finale requiring victory and a slice of good fortune to wrest the title from Brabham. As things transpired he might have succeeded… but for a biff from team-mate von Trips and a precautionary stop. Brooks had previously suffered the injurious consequences of several car failures and wasn’t prepared to contemplate unnecessary risk. He lost half a lap, finished third and was classified a career-best second in the championship.

Even if he’d started just one grand prix for Ferrari, he’d probably still be on this list.

Mike Hawthorn

Red Ferrari single-seater racing car carrying number 6 on a circuit, with a driver wearing a helmet and a large crowd watching from behind the barriers. — Getty Images

Britain has produced more motor racing world champions than any other nation – and the charismatic, bow-tied Hawthorn has the indelible distinction of being the first.

The popular perception of 1958? Hawthorn won the championship through stealth, stocking up on podium finishes to support a solitary championship victory in France, while rivals Moss and Brooks scored seven victories between them but suffered as a result of their Vanwalls’ frailties. True to a point, but hardly a reflection of Hawthorn’s career trajectory.

“The popular perception was Hawthorn won through stealth”

He made his track debut in 1951… yet became a works Ferrari driver within two years, factory stalwart Luigi Villoresi having been alerted to the youngster’s potential after Hawthorn’s F2 Cooper-Bristol gave F1 opposition a hard time at a rain-affected Boreham meeting in August 1952. And that first Ferrari season yielded what was perhaps Hawthorn’s day of days, the Englishman beating Fangio’s Maserati by a second in the nip-and-tuck French GP at Reims (and, in the process, becoming the first Brit to score a championship victory). He finished every points-scoring race – and failed to add to his tally only at Spa, sixth not being considered worthy of reward in those days. It was a hint of what lay ahead.

He left Ferrari at the end of 1954, signing off with victory in the Spanish GP at Pedralbes, in order to be closer to home to run the family garage business in Farnham (following the death in a road accident of his father, Leslie). The next two F1 seasons were patchy, but he rejoined the Scuderia in 1957, racing alongside great mate Peter Collins. The ’58 season, though, would blend triumph with tragedy. Team-mate Luigi Musso died in France, Collins perished during the German GP (Hawthorn, running just behind, was a forlorn witness) and Stuart Lewis-Evans succumbed to burns sustained during the Moroccan finale. By then Hawthorn had decided to retire at the campaign’s end, but didn’t have long to savour his success. On January 22, 1959, almost four months before the new championship season commenced without him in Monaco, Hawthorn died in a road accident on the Guildford by-pass.

He had contributed far more to Ferrari than simple, jingoistic landmarks.

Alberto Ascari

Man in a light-colored racing suit stands beside an open vintage race car, inspecting its exposed engine and mechanical components. — Getty Images

Alberto Ascari – son of the similarly alliterative Antonio – raced the first Ferrari ever built, the 815, in the 1940 Mille Miglia but World War II (and a dalliance with Maserati) delayed the bond’s full forging.

Ascari resumed racing in 1947 and, in tandem with team-mate Luigi Villoresi, switched from Maserati to Ferrari during 1949. Ferrari skipped the opening race of the following year’s freshly instigated world championship, but Ascari took second on the team’s maiden appearance in Monaco. The Indy 500 apart, Alfa Romeo won every world championship race prior to Silverstone 1951, where José Froilán González triumphed for Ferrari, and Ascari followed up by winning in both Germany and Italy.

Helmeted driver in a vintage single-seater racing car approaches a corner on a circuit, with spectators gathered along the track. — Getty Images

Alfa Romeo pulled out for 1952, when the world championship switched to F2 regulations, and Ascari might have had the distinction of winning every Grand Prix had he not skipped Switzerland to prepare for the Indy 500, as you do. Back in Europe, he won the remaining six races (plus a clutch of non-scoring GPs) to begin a streak of nine-straight championship wins, a record that endured until the season just past.

Victory in the 1953 Swiss GP would be his 13th and last, in championship terms. The following season’s transfer to Lancia was hampered by the absence of a race-ready car (he subbed once in a Ferrari) and he retired from the opening two grands prix of 1955, famously plunging into the Monaco harbour during the second of them. He was ostensibly uninjured, but then crashed fatally just a few days later while testing one of first love Ferrari’s sports cars at Monza.

It remains a curious statistic that Italian drivers won three of the first four FIA world championships… yet none has done so since Ascari.

Jacky Ickx

Young racing driver wearing a helmet and racing suit seated in a vintage single-seater race car, with the car’s exposed mechanical components and sponsor markings visible. — Getty Images

Groomed by Ken Tyrrell, quick on two wheels and in almost anything on four, blessed by a wonderful touch in the wet… Hardly a surprise that he should have featured on several shopping lists late in the 1960s.

The clues were there almost from the start, when he was promoted from tin-tops to F2 on the back of winning the Belgian saloon car title in 1965. Two years later he set third-fastest qualifying time for the German GP… at the wheel of an F2 Matra. He wasn’t permitted to start at the front, however, but had to line up with the other F2 cars, those that had been circulating at conventional speeds. Less than 12 months later he was en route to his maiden F1 World Championship success, in a Ferrari 312 at Rouen.

That initial Maranello alliance was brief – Gulf was so keen to keep Ickx in its sports cars, racing for them rather than against them in anything red, that it organised him a Brabham drive for 1969 – but he was back at Maranello the following season, when he emerged as Jochen Rindt’s closest title challenger. The highlight was an epic Hockenheim slipstreamer, which Rindt won by seven tenths, and the German eventually took the title – posthumously – by five points.

Ickx went on to score two more GP victories, the last of them at the ’Ring in 1972, but would never again come so close to the main prize. He was still winning at Le Mans a decade later, mind.

Chris Amon

There exists, within the archive of photographer Nick Loudon (who now tends, incidentally, to the big cats resident at Paradise Wildlife Park in Hertfordshire), an exquisite image of Chris Amon, his Ferrari 312 perfectly balanced through Old Hall Corner, the opening right-hander at Oulton Park. Funny to think Ferrari once sent three works cars to a non-championship race on Little Budworth’s fringe… If ever there was an illustration of how grand prix cars should look, this, surely, is it.

Amon was captured thus during a dazzling campaign that promised much, but delivered relatively little. While team-mate Ickx won in France and notched up a string of respectable results, Amon flew but his Ferrari frequently failed: he finished second to Jo Siffert in the British GP at Brands Hatch, but there would be only two other points finishes.

Amon had been a rock for Maranello since the previous summer, when he’d led the team in the wake of Lorenzo Bandini’s death, Mike Parkes’ injury-enforced lay-off and Ludovico Scarfiotti’s decision to ply his trade elsewhere. He would remain so until the summer of 1969, when he became disenchanted with equipment that consistently performed less capably than he himself did.

And so he signed to drive a March 701, just as Ferrari introduced the significantly better 312B…

Kimi Räikkönen

Close-up portrait of a Ferrari racing driver wearing a red Ferrari cap and team jacket, with sunglasses resting on the brim. — Getty Images

On the surface his Ferrari record is patchy. Yes, he took the world championship in 2007, his first season with the team, but it was rarely a campaign ripe with the kind of searing pace that had persuaded Ferrari to prise him from McLaren in the first place. In some ways he more or less stumbled to the title. He won on his Ferrari debut in Australia, but almost threw victory away by dozing off and running wide while holding a comfortable lead. He also benefitted from McLaren’s refusal to issue team orders – Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton finished level on points, one behind the Finn – and required swifter team-mate Felipe Massa to slow down and ease his passage to the front during the decisive race at Interlagos. Massa then outpaced him for most of 2008. Indeed, the Finn seemed to have lost so much impetus that Ferrari opted to dispense with his services in 2009, a year before he was out of contract.

Räikkönen dabbled for a while with the World Rally Championship and NASCAR, returned to F1 with ‘Lotus’ in 2012… and proved so dependably quick (leastways on Sundays) that Ferrari was moved to hire him again – and he spent more time at Maranello at the second time of asking than he did at the first. The first 70 grands prix of his reprised career failed to produce any victories, though that was partly down to Maranello’s traditional habit of backing a single Prancing Horse (Monaco 2017, for instance). While no longer a suitable candidate to lead a team, he provided consistency and stability at a time when both have been essential to Ferrari’s ongoing renaissance. Sebastian Vettel got on well with Kimi and enjoyed having him as a team-mate. The pair helped put Ferrari back in the spotlight, and Räikkönen might be remembered more fondly for that than for actually having won a world title.

Gilles Villeneuve

Close-up portrait of a young racing driver in a red jacket, looking downward with a focused expression. — Getty Images

The pros and cons have been debated ad infinitum, so let’s deal with the negatives first. There aren’t any. So now, on with the good stuff.

Locked in to Ferrari: Why is Leclerc sticking with underperforming F1 team?

Charles Leclerc has been one of F1’s fastest drivers in the seven seasons he’s raced for Ferrari, but has just eight wins to his name, writes Mark Hughes. Will his faith finally be rewarded with his latest contract extension?

5th June 2026

By Mark Hughes

Actually, period rival John Watson makes the valid point that, having demolished 1981 team-mate Didier Pironi in the difficult 126CK, Villeneuve should have continued in the same vein at the dawn of 1982, in the superior 126C2, although the gap between them came down. We’ll never know, of course, how things might have unravelled without fate’s interception, for Villeneuve – seething at what he perceived as Pironi’s duplicity during the San Marino GP – perished two weeks later in Belgium, while trying to beat the Frenchman’s qualifying time.

But that’s the essence of Villeneuve. He wasn’t configured to win championships, but rather to drag the maximum possible lap time from any car, on any day, and rely on preternatural reflexes to counter the consequences. And that commitment was just as absolute during non-championship races – doubters should check footage of his battle with Mario Andretti in the 1979 Race of Champions at Brands Hatch.

Gilles Villeneuve driving a Ferrari Formula 1 car in the wet — Getty Images

He has often been described as wild, but that’s a gross simplification. He was incredibly raw when McLaren handed him his F1 debut at Silverstone in 1977 – and, despite a hugely impressive performance, which would have yielded a solid points finish but for a stop triggered by a faulty gauge, he was still awaiting a second opportunity when Ferrari came calling.Mistakes were inevitable during the early part of his F1 career, given the gulf that separated a full-time grand prix ride from his former comfort zone in North American Formula Atlantic, but unforced errors were pretty much exorcised by the summer of 1978. He was rarely more than a couple of corners from some unexpected drama, but the triggers were usually beyond his control.

“Villeneuve was a racer’s racer: a poet on four wheels”

Was it simply exuberance that pushed his equipment to the point of failure?

It was wonderful to behold, but the facts suggest a driver of rare delicacy and feel – one who invariably made his tyres last longer than his team-mates were able to manage.

There were times when Michelin considered his compound preferences optimistic, but its engineers came to trust his judgment – and with good cause.

And then there was his perfect defensive technique in Spain 1981… or that qualifying lap in Monaco soon afterwards, when he qualified what was effectively a Routemaster bus on the front row – almost 2.5sec quicker than team-mate Pironi – before taking an unlikely victory after Alan Jones’ Williams developed fuel starvation. But he’d thought about that race, too, driving to a pace rather than trying to stick with a faster car.

Had he been a gibbon, neither of those results would have been possible.

And as well as the speed there was honour – adhering to his role as Jody Scheckter’s number two in 1979, even on days when he was potentially brisker.

Fast and principled, he was a racer’s racer and a poet on four wheels.

Niki Lauda

Close-up portrait of a racing driver wearing sunglasses and a red racing suit, seated near the track. — Getty Images

It was March 31, 1972 when first I saw him race, Lauda dominating a sodden second round of the John Player British F2 Championship at Oulton Park. He finished almost 50sec clear of Gerry Birrell’s similar March and an 11-year-old me was hugely impressed. Little did I realise that future colleagues were rather less enthused by the Austrian’s simultaneous F1 performances in the dreadful March 721s, G and X.

The following season with BRM proved a little more encouraging – and in Canada, beneath a deluge, there he was again, running at the front. I experienced that only via the twin miracles of Motor Sport and Motoring News, but it was nice to know Oulton hadn’t necessarily been a mirage.

Clay Regazzoni was impressed with his young team-mate, sufficiently so to put in a word as he prepared to return to a Ferrari team plotting its escape from the doldrums.

“If anybody thought he’d lost his edge, 1977 provided the answer”

At the wheel of Mauro Forghieri’s 312 B3, Lauda finished second first time out in Argentina and won three races later at Jarama – such were the fruits of a relentless test and development programme that he undertook with rare zeal. He led the standings after Brands Hatch (where he was classified fifth, despite being blocked in the pits by hangers-on after a late-race stop to changed a punctured tyre), but failed to add to his points tally thereafter.He conjured a more complete season in 1975, particularly once the new 312T came on stream, and took the title on the back of nine pole positions and five victories.

He became the first Ferrari driver to win the championship since John Surtees in 1964. The 1976 campaign has been much revisited in the wake of the release of the film Rush, but the real script was much better than anything that appeared in the movie. But for that terrifying and fiery accident at the Nürburgring, the title would almost certainly have been Lauda’s.

Niki Lauda driving a red-and-white Ferrari Formula 1 car, number 1, at a racetrack with spectators in the background. — Getty Images

As it was, he might still have been crowned had he not considered conditions in Japan too dangerous, recent events having given him a fresh perspective on life’s value.

He wasn’t happy that Ferrari signed Carlos Reutemann – a deal completed during the Austrian’s convalescence – because it opened the exit door for friend Regazzoni… and also implied that Ferrari hadn’t fully believed in Lauda’s powers of recovery.

If anybody thought Lauda had lost his edge, 1977 provided the clear answer: three wins and dazzling consistency brought him title number two, after which he offered the team a time-honoured salute and walked away with two races to go. Job done.

Unwittingly he’d done the team another favour, because Gilles Villeneuve was kicking his heels…

Lorenzo Bandini

Vintage black-and-white photo of a racing driver seated in an open-wheel race car, wearing a white helmet with goggles around his neck. — Getty Images

If you scripted a name for a fictional Ferrari driver, it would be difficult to conjure anything better…

Bandini started all but seven of his F1 World Championship grands prix for Ferrari and the journey was rarely dull. Overlooked in 1961 when the team took a punt on Giancarlo Baghetti, he was finally hired the following season, then dropped to make way for Willy Mairesse… and finally re-signed in the summer of ’63, after Mairesse was injured.

Through it all he remained calm – a conspicuous attribute in an age when Latin drivers were reputed to be anything but. He notched up his one and only points-scoring victory in the 1964 Austrian GP, his car holding together after the brutally rough Zeltweg airfield surface triggered suspension failures for erstwhile leaders Gurney and Surtees. His most significant contribution that season, however, was saved until last, Bandini easing up during the final moments of the Mexican GP to hand team-mate Surtees second place and the title.

He looked set to score another world championship victory at Reims in 1966, but a broken throttle cable put paid to that. Instead, his best results would be a brace of second places, both in Monaco, in 1965 and ’66.

One year later he led briefly on the principality’s streets and was running second, in simultaneous pursuit of his dreams and Denny Hulme’s Brabham, when he clipped the chicane. His 312 overturned before igniting; it took rescue crews an age to extract him and Bandini suffered appalling injuries. Three days later, Italy lost a figure that had been almost as much a part of mid-’60s Ferrari as the Prancing Horse.

Nigel Mansell

Close-up of a Ferrari racing driver wearing a white and red helmet with Marlboro branding and a British flag. — Getty Images

Two seasons, three wins (one of them on his 1989 Ferrari debut in Rio, another from 12th on the grid at the impossible-to-overtake Hungaroring), a one-race suspension and a premature retirement announcement… Mansell created more headlines during a relatively short Maranello sojourn than most drivers manage in a career.

Ferrari’s initial offer was timely, after Mansell had spent 1988 wrestling a Williams-Judd following the team’s split from Honda, but not too much was expected of John Barnard’s 640 chassis, with its revolutionary semi-automatic transmission. The issue wasn’t so much speed as reliability, but the car held together first time out in Brazil… and Mansell would not finish again until France, in July. Whenever he lasted, though, as he did six times in 15 starts, he was on the podium.

His 641 was only a little more solid the following season, but incoming team-mate Prost swiftly got the upper hand, politically and competitively, with a run of four wins by mid-season. The last of those came at Silverstone, where Mansell retired with transmission failure before chucking his gloves into the crowd and announcing that he would quit at the season’s end.

Utter nonsense, of course, but symbolic of the heart-on-sleeve mentality that endeared Mansell – Il Leone – to the tifosi, forging a bond that endures to this day.

Felipe Massa

Two Ferrari Formula 1 drivers in red racing suits, with one wearing a brightly coloured racing helmet and the other standing beside him. — Getty Images

Felipe Massa? The howls of protest are almost audible from here. But tarry a moment…

Often portrayed as a humble, erratic punch bag, Massa spent eight full seasons as a Ferrari racer – and time before that as a development driver. Throughout that period he proved to be an almost perfect team player, spectacularly fast on his day and a paragon of subservience when required. Everybody mentions McLaren’s failure to impose team orders as a key reason for its failure to win the 2007 world title, but the British team would still have prevailed had Massa not backed off around the time of his second pitstop in Brazil, to allow team-mate Kimi Räikkönen free passage.

Räikkönen joined Ferrari with a reputation for peerless speed, but Massa had the upper hand during much of their three seasons together. Again, everybody recalls Lewis Hamilton’s last-corner pass as the reason for Massa failing to take the crown in 2008, but there were silly mistakes on the Brazilian’s part in the first two races, plus an engine failure in Hungary and a slapstick refuelling error in Singapore. For much of that season Massa drove splendidly – and in defeat he responded with wonderful grace and dignity that have been his trademarks.

Ferrari insiders insist he hasn’t been quite the same in the wake of a head injury, suffered during qualifying for the 2009 Hungarian GP (when a stray Brawn damper spring struck him on the helmet).

He outqualified new team-mate Fernando Alonso on his comeback in Bahrain at the start of the following season, but was rarely able to outpace the Spaniard in races. And then Ferrari dispensed with his services in order to re-sign Räikkönen, the very driver Massa used to beat with such frequency. Strange world.

Fernando Alonso

Widely tipped to win the world title in 2010, when Ferrari recruited him to replace the somnolent Kimi Räikkönen, but the main prize always eluded him at Maranello – close though he came.

That first year began brightly, with victory in Bahrain, although he received a helping hand when a duff spark plug slowed Sebastian Vettel. Alonso was in the driving seat ahead of the seasonal finale in Abu Dhabi, where Ferrari took a catastrophic strategic punt and condemned its talisman to spend the evening chasing Vitaly Petrov’s Renault. Vettel took advantage and was champion for the next four years.

“It’s what he did when the Ferrari wasn’t on form that really counts”

Alonso was a strong title contender in two of his five seasons with the Scuderia, but also lost out at the last in Brazil 2012. It’s not so much what he did when Ferrari was on form, however, as what he did when it wasn’t. The team had only the fourth-best chassis in 2013 – and countless development tweaks made precious little difference – but Alonso ended the campaign as Vettel’s closest rival. The team was absolutely nowhere at the start of 2012, but its car worked better in cool conditions and Alonso vaulted from ninth on the grid to win in Malaysia – opportunism of the kind that kept him in contention. And then there have been cameos such as Spain 2011, where team principal Stefano Domenicali felt the car might be good enough for row four… but Alonso put it fourth and led the race for longer than should have been possible (before slipping to fifth).

He might not be Hamilton – or Vettel –quick over a single lap, but he’s only a smidgen adrift and performs at his peak through almost every turn. At a time of technical turmoil, he continually flattered the equipment at his disposal – and that’s ever a hallmark of class.

Phil Hill

Black-and-white close-up portrait of a male motor racing driver looking off to the side. — Getty Images

It remains a quirky statistic that three men named Hill have started a world championship grand prix – and all have lifted the world title. And Phil, the first, is possibly the least celebrated.

Many regard him as a sports car specialist – and it’s hard to brook argument with a CV that includes three victories apiece at both Le Mans and Sebring. Others certainly enjoyed sharing with him in endurance events, because he was both fast and tender, usually finishing stints with his car pretty much as it had been when he started. In a previous life he’d spannered cars for friends, so mechanical sympathy was perhaps second nature.

History records that he clinched his world title in the 1961 Italian GP, the race that claimed his team-mate Wolfgang von Trips, but their tussle had hitherto been close: the German had two wins, two seconds and a fourth to his name, Hill one victory, two seconds and two thirds. He trailed von Trips by four points prior to Monza – and the title’s destiny was anything but certain with two races remaining. Fate then intervened, however, and Hill went on to become America’s first F1 champion.

His GP career rather petered out in the slipstream of that success, but he continued to compete successfully in sports cars and had the distinction of winning his final race, sharing the victorious Chaparral 2F with Mike Spence in the 1967 BOAC 500Kms at Brands Hatch.

Hill had made his world championship GP debut at Reims in 1958, when his taut approach contrasted starkly with the casual joviality of such as Hawthorn and Collins. Images of Phil Hill seldom portray relaxation in a racing car, but rather someone who was tense, edgy and acutely aware of his profession’s potential consequences. Someone, indeed, who looks as though he’d rather be almost anywhere else. That, though, was never a barrier to speed.

Jody Scheckter

Ferrari Formula 1 race car with number 11 and Michelin branding on track. — Getty Images

Mosport Park, Canada, September 27, 1980: Jody Scheckter is 26th of 28 at the end of qualifying, 0.8sec behind team-mate Gilles Villeneuve, 4.3sec shy of Nelson Piquet’s pole-winning Brabham and two places short of making the cut – an ignominious detail prior to what should have been his penultimate grand prix start. Things weren’t a great deal better one week later at Watkins Glen, where he started 23rd and crossed the line 11th, three laps in arrears and last of the classified runners. Few careers have commenced with quite such a bang as Jody Scheckter’s… nor ended with quite such a whimper.

He spent only two of his eight full F1 seasons with Ferrari – and in the first of those guided his 312 T4 (an example of which he still owns) to the world title, helped in part by Villeneuve’s respect for the South African’s official number one status. By that stage of his career 29-year-old Scheckter was a mature contrast to the firebrand of yore, a driver prepared to play the percentages and relying as much on intellect as reflex.

The following season’s T5 proved to be woefully uncompetitive and Scheckter mustered just a couple of points, from fifth at Long Beach. His title, though, remained an unwanted landmark – at least for his team: the last won by a Ferrari driver until Michael Schumacher ended the drought… 21 years later.

Juan Manuel Fangio

Black-and-white portrait of a vintage racing driver wearing a leather helmet and large goggles. — Getty Images

During the 1950s he captured five world titles with four manufacturers, and some perceive that as a sign of versatility while others regard it as a symbol of political aptitude – an ability to make sure he was in the right seat at the right time. For 1956, though, he had few options in the wake of Mercedes-Benz’s withdrawal, and his marriage to Ferrari was largely one of convenience.

“Fangio didn’t much care for the team, nor its patriarch: a mutual feeling”

Fangio didn’t much care for the team, nor its patriarch (the feeling was mutual), so the path to a fourth world championship was rarely comfortable. In theory, Ferrari had no official number one driver, despite the strength of Fangio’s CV, yet he took over Luigi Musso’s car to win in Argentina and annexed Peter Collins’ D50 to finish second in both Monaco and, more famously, Italy (where the Englishman volunteered his car after Musso refused to stand down). In the midst of this complexity, there were more normal afternoons in Britain and Germany, where victories helped underpin his title challenge. Even at Silverstone, though, Fangio’s driving was conspicuously less silky than usual. He recovered from an early spin at Becketts, but made the front only after the BRMs and Moss’s Maserati 250F hit trouble.

Fangio found a more natural home when he rejoined Maserati the following season. He would return to Modena as defending champion, but it had been a less satisfying conquest than any that had gone before – or, indeed, the one that would follow.

Clay Regazzoni

Possibly the fastest name this side of Lorenzo Bandini – and it would be hard to sound any more Italian, even though he was Swiss.

After a topsy-turvy junior career, he joined the Ferrari F1 team in 1970 – while simultaneously en route to the European F2 title – and scored a useful fourth place on his debut in Holland.

Better was to follow at Monza, his fifth race, when he scored a home win for the team at the end of an emotional weekend, scarred by the death during practice of championship leader Jochen Rindt. Such was Regazzoni’s form during the campaign’s second half that he finished third in the points, behind Rindt and Jacky Ickx.

Race of Champions apart, he recorded no more F1 wins over the next two seasons and was quietly dropped, prior to being recalled again in 1974… when he took but a single victory, at the Nürburgring, but proved sufficiently consistent to remain in the title fight until the Watkins Glen finale, where he lost out to Emerson Fittipaldi.

He remained for two more years – and added as many victories, most notably at Monza in 1975 – before being shown the door, not least because Ferrari had signed Carlos Reutemann for the following season, fearing Niki Lauda might not recover from injuries sustained at the Nürburgring. But Lauda was already back, and racing…

The Austrian originally came to Maranello on Regazzoni’s recommendation, following a year together at BRM in 1973.

Michael Schumacher

The numbers are impressive – five world titles to add to the two acquired with Benetton, 72 grand prix wins to complement the previous 19 and a string of distinguished cameos – but it took time for the steamroller to hit its stride.

His first Ferrari, the F310, was mediocre on a good day, but he conjured three wins nonetheless. And then he played a pivotal role in securing the services of former Benetton allies Rory Byrne and Ross Brawn. He would be a title contender the following season – when he soured the Jerez decider by driving at rather than against Jacques Villeneuve, leading to a meaningless exclusion from the final points table (although all results stood). He was defeated by Mika Häkkinen in 1998 and suffered a broken leg during the summer of ’99 – but persistence paid in 2000 and the world championship remained his for the next five seasons.

It helped that he had Brawn and Byrne on-side, that Jean Todt was there to issue “slow down” messages in the event of an impudent number two (usually Rubens Barrichello) driving more quickly than he should, and that from 2001-04 Bridgestone tailored its tyres to suit the Ferrari, its best hope of repelling teams running the philosophically different Michelins. The stars might have been correctly aligned, but for the most part he exploited such advantages brilliantly.

There was, though, too much questionable stuff – brutal defence that equated to a two-footed lunge with studs showing, or else the incident during qualifying for Monaco 2006, where he stopped on the racing line at Rascasse to scupper rivals’ attempts to beat his lap time. There were howls of protest from Maranello when stewards moved him from the front of the grid to the back, but it was a slow right-hander that he’d taken more than a thousand times: odd, then, that this time he should twice steer left in mid-corner.

His self-belief was never less than impressive, but in a sport that thrives on romance he was simply too cynical.

Charles Leclerc

Another update to this feature, and one more than deserved. While this original list was compiled when Charles Leclerc was only just beginning his single-seater career, it now feels incomplete without him.

Modern grand prix drivers are regularly accused of lacking the character and flourish of their forebears, but not Leclerc. Here we have a flamboyant Monegasque, fluent in three languages and the ways of a piano – he has even released hit classical EPs. He’s got boyband good looks, love interests including models and high-profile influencers – including his wife Alexandra Saint Mleux, an art historian – he’s voice acted for Disney’s Pixar and flown in fighter jets with the French Air and Space Force. There’s Bentley Boy comparisons wherever you look. Oh, and he can drive a bit too…

Since joining The Scuderia in 2019, Leclerc has brought a new air to a team that was once too reliant on signing established talent, often too late. Leclerc came in with little expectation against the de-facto team leader and four-time world-beater Sebastian Vettel, but beat him all ends up with two grand prix wins to Vettel’s one, Leclerc fourth in the points to Vettel’s fifth. From that point, the focus shifted at Maranello.

Since that breakthrough season, Leclerc has established himself among Ferrari’s elite, with his tally of grand prix wins (nine, at time of writing) putting him amongst names like Räikkönen, Alonso, Ascari and Vettel. He even holds the record for the most pole positions (27) without a world championship crown to match. Standout performances include that emotional home victory at Monaco in 2024, and his determined defence at Monza in 2019.

As marketable as he is quick, Leclerc has a contract until the end of 2028, but don’t be surprised if he remains a fixture for Ferrari for many seasons beyond.

Ferrari Purosangue: why the 2170kg V12 crossover is no SUV

On July 14, 1951, Enzo’s Scuderia won a round of the Formula 1 World Championship for the first time. Many racing fans’ love affair with the Prancing Horse started right then, at Silverstone in the British Grand Prix, when a V12 375 driven by a portly Argentinian made the team a force to be reckoned with. Below, writers, columnists, and drivers present Ferrari’s 75 most important moments from its history on the track and road.

Read on for a panoply of engineering prowess, incredible drives and full-on race action

Written by

Matt Bishop (MB) – Motor Sport interviewer/columnist and PR guru
Karun Chandhok (KC) – F1 punditry sage and boyhood Michael Schumacher fan
Adam Cooper (AC) – knows more F1 media centres than he’s had hot dinners
Simon de Burton (SDB) – our auctions expert has his say on road exotica
Peter Grimsdale (PG) – author of Superveloce: How Italian Cars Conquered the World
Doug Nye (DCN) – historian and Motor Sport regular has met 1950s heroes
Anthony Peacock (AP) – he’s half-Italian, but he’s a full-spec tifoso
Anthony Rowlinson (AR) – nicknamed Le Professeur due to Prost resemblance
Marcus Simmons (MS) – childhood Gerry Marshall fan before discovering Lauda
Sam Smith (SS) – loves to tell the stories furthest from the beaten track
Peter Stevens (PS) – designer of the McLaren F1 and Jaguar XJR-15 road cars
Gary Watkins (GW) – doyen of sports car racing and ardent 333SP aficionado

Chris Amon seated in his Ferrari race car, wearing striped helmet — Grand Prix Photo, Getty Images

1. Amon: bad-luck magnet

It all started so well: with Lorenzo Bandini, the New Zealander took victory in the 1967 Daytona 24 Hours, his first start for Ferrari. But in Formula 1, Chris Amon’s bad luck started to become legendary, his best result a second in the 1968 British GP. To his fortune, add bad career choices: he went to March in 1970, just as Ferrari began to come good again. But back home in the Tasman Series, he was a force at the wheel of Ferrari’s 2.4-litre Dino 246: two wins in ’68 and a narrow defeat in the title to Jim Clark; four wins and the crown in ’69. A Ferrari legend? Too right. MS

Ferrari 333SP prototype racing car with driver, front view — Grand Prix Photo, Getty Images

2. The 333SP’s crucial role

The 499P may have ended the wait for a first outright Ferrari Le Mans 24 Hours victory in nearly 60 years, yet the 333SP might be the more important car. The only prototype developed by the Prancing Horse between the 312PB and today’s Le Mans Hypercar saved sports car racing in North America. In Europe it helped re-establish prototype racing. Without it, there might have been nowhere for the 499P to race! That’s not to forget the 51 races it won, or that it looked great and sounded even better. No one who heard the scream from its 4-litre V12 at full revs can forget the 333SP. GW

Ferrari F2004 Formula 1 car with sponsor logos and aerodynamic design — Lat Images

3. Dominance of F2004

The F2004 epitomised the Todt-Brawn-Byrne-Schumacher era at Ferrari. Never before or since has a team combined a bespoke chassis, engine and tyres fully designed to suit one genius driver’s style, and the results were devastating. After a 2003 season where Juan Pablo Montoya and Kimi Räikkönen pushed Michael Schumacher until the end, nobody else stood a chance in 2004 as Michael romped to his unprecedented seventh world championship. The following year, F1 went to the bizarre no-tyre-changes rule before the mighty V10 engines were outlawed, replaced by the V8s. These two alterations meant that 2004 remains the peak of F1 performance in my view, with cars that were 193kg lighter than in 2025, with roughly the same amount of power! KC

Patrick Tambay celebrates 1982 German Grand Prix win with laurel wreath on podium — Ercole Colombo

4. Tambay’s emotion

This suave, urbane Frenchman lifted Ferrari out of its post-Villeneuve fatality/Pironi injury depression with victories in the 1982 German Grand Prix, above, and 1983 San Marino GP. Two decades later, I interviewed Patrick Tambay for this magazine and, while describing the momentous events of Imola and “winning for Gilles”, he broke down crying while remembering his friend. A moment of fragility from a boyhood hero. And he loved the stat that, from mid-1982 to Ferrari’s mid-1983 slump, his F1 points tally over that period was higher than anyone else’s. MS

Ferrari 312 B Formula 1 car racing on track with driver in cockpit — Getty Images

5. 312 B: missed champion

Had the 312 B’s best races of 1970-71 been compressed into one season, instead of split across the two, we’d have seen Jacky Ickx as F1 champion. Mauro Forghieri had led development of the flat-12 engine to 3-litre F1 form. His concept slung it beneath a boom high on the rear of a typical Ferrari ‘aero’-style monocoque with stressed-skin panelling over a lightweight tube inner frame. Test failures delayed its debut until the 1970 South African GP. In the second half of ’70 they won four GPs, with two championship GP wins in ’71. The 312 Bs remained the most elegant and best packaged Ferrari until – arguably – the Postlethwaite-era 156 turbos of ’85. DCN

6. The wily Chinetti

‘The Old Man’ came to rate a Le Mans win as being of greater promotional benefit to his company than any F1 title. Luigi Chinetti was a wily and persuasive technician/driver/dealer who played a critical role in convincing Enzo Ferrari of the American market’s commercial potential, but only after he had ’sold’ the sceptical Modenese on supporting the revived Le Mans 24 Hours race from 1949. Chinetti was already a two-time Alfa Romeo winner there, and for Ferrari in ’49 he won again – driving a 166 MM, above. Mr Ferrari made him his North American concessionaire, and the two hard-bitten tough guys maintained a hard-nosed commercial relationship for decades thereafter. DCN

7. Berger on the right road

It’s the 1987 Portuguese GP. Gerhard Berger is on course for Ferrari’s first F1 victory in over two years, and Murray Walker yells: “If he wins this, Berger will have the freedom of Italy.” Moments later he throws it away, and James Hunt chuckles: “Now he’ll have the freedom of an Italian prison cell.” The Austrian atoned with success soon after at Suzuka and Adelaide, the first two of his five Ferrari wins. A straight-talker, whose deeds in red set Maranello back on the road towards the title close-call with Alain Prost. MS

Two Ferrari Formula 1 cars racing side by side at Monza 1988 — DPPI

8. Miracle of Monza ’88

“I’m surrounded by cheering, gesticulating, overjoyed Italians – and the atmosphere here is unbelievable.” Murray Walker, in the BBC commentary box, was summing up the scene at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza as Gerhard Berger led Michele Alboreto to a remarkable Ferrari 1-2. McLaren’s Ayrton Senna, leading comfortably with two laps to go, had awkwardly clipped Jean-Louis Schlesser’s Williams, subbing for Nigel Mansell (suffering from chickenpox), thereby preventing a 1988 McLaren clean sweep. A month after Enzo Ferrari’s death, it was as if a giant finger of fate had pointed down at the Rettifilo chicane to ensure the ‘Old Man’ was sent off in style. SS

9. Nigel Mansell on 1989 and the 640

“The gearbox was prehistoric initially. There was a delay in the synchronisation with the throttle. The reliability as you know was catastrophic. At least for another year it would have been better staying manual.

“Like anything else, when you are developing something, you have to go in the whole way, otherwise it never gets developed. The start of it was a horrific experience. Whoever drove, whether it was Gerhard [Berger] or myself, the car ran three laps or five laps and failed.

“The thing is, with the expectations that I went with, knowing what was being developed, it was OK. Yes, of course it was frustrating, but on the other hand it wasn’t, because we were working together and we knew what the problems were. Just like when I went back to Williams in ’91 – the semi-automatic box lost the championship for us in the first half of the year. It’s development. It’s just back then the reliability of F1 cars was different. Thirty per cent of the cars used to fail all the time and, whether you were winning or losing, the cars were not reliable. It was a challenge, but it was exciting.

Nigel Mansell driving Ferrari 640 Formula 1 car number 27 on track — Nigel Mansell won the 1989 season-opener in Brazil but the 640 lacked reliability

“I think what is fantastic is you get one chance to win first time out with a new team, and I won first time out in Rio on pure luck and destiny. It’s an historic, almost unbelievable thing that happened. It’s like, how on earth did that happen? Especially when you see your team-mate on the sidelines out of the race already after half a dozen laps. You think, ‘How many laps is mine going to last?’ It was really strange.

“The race was very vivid, because I can remember getting up to third, getting up to second, and being pleased – equally being pleased and totally ticked off, because I think it’s going to break down in a minute! In the warm-up before the race, I didn’t even make one lap – I broke down in half a lap, and I sat the entire warm-up on the sidelines, watching it. So there was very little confidence in it continuing.

“Going down the straight, the steering wheel completely dropped to one side, the bolts were falling out. I thought, ‘Oh my God!’ I just pushed it back on and got back to the pits very, very quickly, and changed four wheels and the steering wheel.

“We didn’t finish another six or seven races because we kept breaking down. If you don’t finish a whole number of races, you know the championship is out of the door. What I did feel is that if we worked hard enough we could win races, and obviously we had a great race win in Hungary later on that year, and a few second places as well.

“I really do believe it was a championship contending car, if we’d had reliability, but you needed Lady Luck in those days.” AC

10. Tazio the legend

Mr Ferrari always declared the great Tazio Nuvolari to be his yardstick for judging drivers. The legendary little Mantuan built his reputation racing motorcycles before aspiring to cars. His style was utterly spectacular, total commitment in every turn, and he was equally determined to see his talents rewarded. He and Mr Ferrari would as often clash over money as provision of truly competitive cars, but they developed a history of recognising when they needed one another’s services. Nuvolari proved himself capable of winning in any kind of car or race, from Mille Miglia and Targa Florio to German GP or Vanderbilt Cup. DCN

11. Battle of Jarama ’81

The legend of Gilles Villeneuve has been built around this flamboyant driver who did spectacular powerslides, drove around with wheels hanging off and took incredible risks. However, the race around Jarama in 1981 showed that beyond all that bravado, Gilles could be a very smart racer who had the ability to play to his car’s strengths, and put on a defensive masterclass without the drama that he is revered for. A quick look at the highlights on YouTube underlines Enzo Ferrari’s philosophy: build a great engine with loads of power, and the drivers will just have to manage with whatever the chassis is. KC

12. Harmony of 312 B3

I still vividly remember the sight – and the sound – of the very first Formula 1 car I ever saw, at Brands Hatch in 1974. As my stepfather and I took our seats on the Clearways grass bank for the race morning warm-up for the British Grand Prix, on Saturday (yes, Saturday) July 20, the first car that flashed – and screamed – into view was Clay Regazzoni’s Ferrari 312 B3, its flat-12 engine barking raucously as Regazzoni heel-and-toe braked for Clark Curve. I was 11 at the time, and instantly transfixed. Now, more than half a century later, I commend my 11-year-old self for his good judgment, for that wonderful racing car still represents for me a harmony of F1 beauty, music and power that will never fade. MB

Juan Manuel Fangio and Enzo Ferrari smiling together after 1956 Grand Prix victory — Monza, 1956: Enzo Ferrari with his Formula 1 champion, Fangio. The two were not always on such good terms

13. Fangio in ’56

A celebrated love/hate relationship through 1956 was coloured by Fangio’s sense of Mr Ferrari taking advantage of him financially when he was down – Mercedes had just opted out, back home President Perón had been overthrown, and Fangio’s finances were frozen for investigation by the new regime. When Ferrari F1 service fell short of what Fangio felt was reasonable, all bets were off. After trouble in the 1956 Argentinian and Monaco GPs, he pressed ‘The Old Man’ to provide a dedicated mechanic for his car alone. Failure in the French GP preceded victory in the British and German GPs, and in Italy Fangio clinched the fourth of his five Formula 1 World Championship titles. Relations with Mr Ferrari remained strained before a fragile rapprochement in old age. DCN

14. A Bridge too far?

I was in the Hungaroring press room in 2003, when, while Fernando Alonso was cruising to his maiden F1 win for Renault and Michelin, the message “waved blue flags for car #1” came up on the data screens. When that happened, Michael Schumacher (for the No1 car was his Bridgestone-tyred Ferrari), Jean Todt and Ross Brawn decided that they would enlist the support of the FIA’s Max Mosley in an effort to nobble the leading Michelin runners – Renault, Williams and McLaren. The FIA suddenly required Michelin to reprofile tyres that had been deemed legal for two years, and in the FIA press conference at Monza all hell was let loose as Flavio Briatore, Patrick Head and Ron Dennis eviscerated Brawn. MB

15. The dignity of Massa

Dignity is a quality little celebrated in Formula 1, an arena more readily sustained by baser instincts. Yet on the top step of the Interlagos podium after the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix, amid champagne spume and the pop of flash guns, it was in plain view. Felipe Massa had just won his home race, raised a hand in acknowledgement as his Ferrari F2008 crossed the line, and reached out to lift the world champion’s crown… only for McLaren rival Lewis Hamilton to snatch it away with his unlikely fifth place, 38.097sec later. There was no fury, few tears from Felipe. Just a moment in the spotlight that enshrined something vanishingly rare. AR

16. F2 engine’s odd win

In a little-heralded byway of single-seater racing history, Ferrari became a European Formula 2 Championship winner as engine supplier in 1977. Maranello had produced successful F2 cars in the 1950s and ’60s, then threw a new dimension into the category by developing a 2-litre version of the Dino V6 to take on BMW, Renault and Hart. At Misano that August, Elio de Angelis, making his F2 debut in a Ralt with Scuderia Everest (soon to be Minardi) led Lamberto Leoni’s Trivellato Racing Chevron, above, both Ferrari-powered. De Angelis spun and Leoni won. The engine was heavy, oil pump problems didn’t help and, by the end of ’78, Ferrari was gone from F2. MS

Crowd of fans taking photos near racetrack fence as Ferrari team members wave from the other side — Lat/Sutton Images

17. Romance of Fiorano

No other team can boast its own track, where it can lock the gates to the pesky media and tease the adoring fans peering over the fences from the nearby trees. It creates a carnival atmosphere on the bridge outside the circuit, where the tifosi hang around for hours to see the cars do five laps. Red Bull or Mercedes definitely don’t get the same buzz at Silverstone… I often wonder whether it’s the nationalistic feeling invoked by Ferrari, where the fans feel it’s their home team taking on the world, and that therefore the first glimpse of a new car, and the gladiators who will take it into battle, is incredibly powerful. Just ask Lewis Hamilton – the most recent Ferrari driver to get the full Fiorano treatment. KC

18. Surtees and his fallout

To this writer, John Surtees was not only a legend but also a great fan of the sport and supporter of young drivers: we had discussions over young talent we were watching, he in his ambassadorial role for the Racing Steps Foundation. The experience he could pass on… He was a Ferrari hero for winning the 1964 world title, and could well have taken another in ’66 (and more beyond then?) had his mid-season fallout with team manager Eugenio Dragoni not driven him to fury – and departure from Maranello. To Italians, he remained ‘Il Grande John’, a nickname from his bike days with MV Agusta, and, of course, a Ferrari talisman. MS

Mika Häkkinen’s silver McLaren and Michael Schumacher’s red Ferrari racing side by side at Spa-Francorchamps during the 2000 Belgian Grand Prix — Bernard Cahier/Getty Images

19. Michael vs Mika

In 2000, Michael Schumacher was desperate for another world title – his last was in 1995. Just how desperate became obvious in that year’s Belgian GP. Mika Häkkinen, who had pipped ‘Schumi’ to the 1998 and ’99 titles, attempted to pass him for the lead on the Kemmel Straight. Michael squeezed Mika. They touched. Häkk forced back. Mika was stung. A lap later he surged past at the same spot, separated from Schumacher by an unwitting Ricardo Zonta, to complete one of F1’s most celebrated passing manoeuvres. Mika won the day, but Michael won the war, claiming the title at the Japanese GP. But that misty Spa Sunday proved that Schumacher’s hunger for victory knew no bounds. AR

20. Capelli and… refuelling

“Obviously for an Italian to become a Ferrari driver is a great experience. Immediately you are making a big jump forward for the media and the public. You are going to be known by nearly everybody in Italy.

Red Ferrari Formula 1 car number 28 producing sparks from undertray while speeding on track — Italian driver Ivan Capelli joined Ferrari in 1992 – a special moment, although his season lacked spark and he was dropped

Dppi

“On the morning of the press conference I was driving to Maranello with a journalist friend of mine. We stopped just before the highway to refuel, and it was no problem. In the evening when we came back to Milan we stopped again to refuel at the same place, and in five seconds my car was surrounded by people, asking for autographs. This was in just eight hours! The first time I tested the car at Fiorano, when I started from the pits with the little black horse in the middle of my steering wheel, I just couldn’t believe it. On your skin you have a feeling that is fantastic and you can’t really find the words to describe it.” AC

21. John Barnard on the 412 T2

“We called it the Type 646. A good car. There was nothing standout different about it, although it had a low nose when most cars didn’t. The later V12s had a seven-bearing crank, which was a much better arrangement than the four we had previously. Fundamentally it was a better engine. But it still had significantly more internal friction than the V10 they built later.

“When we first ran it, we didn’t have bargeboards on it, as we were still trying to optimise them in the tunnel. I think it was the second or third race where we put the bargeboards on – that made a fairly big step aerodynamically. The thing that both Alesi and Berger said was that it was a good car to drive. You could really hustle it.

Red Ferrari Formula 1 car number 28 with Marlboro and Agip sponsorships cornering on track, driven by racer in helmet — Round 1, 1995 – the debut of the John Barnard-designed Ferrari 412 T2. Gerhard Berger made the podium

Lat/Bernard Cahier/Getty Images, Rm Sotheby’s, Mcklein, Dppi, Sutton

“Perhaps we didn’t win that many races, but often they were up there and going quite well. Alesi won in Canada in June 1995. In Italy they were 1-2 and the camera fell off Alesi’s car and smashed Berger’s suspension. Then Alesi had a wheel-bearing failure.

“I think speed-wise they were evenly matched. Alesi was quite erratic. He was potentially super-quick, but he was also not consistent, not 100% reliable. Don’t get me wrong, I love Jean, I think he’s a super bloke, but sometimes he’d lose it a bit in the race or have a mad moment, whereas Gerhard was more consistent and stable throughout.

“That car, towards the end of 1995, was the first Ferrari that Schumacher drove. We were in Estoril with him. We had a regular 1995 car with the V12, and a mule with the new V10. He liked the V12. He said, ‘I could have won the world championship easier with this car than the Benetton!’ He went faster than Alesi and Berger.

“But when he drove the V10 he didn’t like it as much. When you came off the throttle the internal friction within the engine was less than in the V12. With the V12, when you went on and off the throttle it used to make the back of the car react.

“Berger and Alesi didn’t like that. They used to say in high-speed corners if we lift off a tiny bit the engine has got so much internal friction that it upsets the car. But Schumacher liked that. He was driving like a rally car, on the throttle. That always stuck in my mind. He liked it, they didn’t.” AC

22. Peterson’s bonus

Ronnie joined Ferrari for sports car racing in 1972-73. He thought driving the 312 PB looked more fun than hefting around the alternative Alfa Romeo T33: “And then we woss winning everything. Woss a bonus – you know?” Co-driving with Tim Schenken, he won the 1972 Buenos Aires and Nürburgring 1000Kms and was second to team-mates at Daytona, Sebring and Watkins Glen. ‘SuperSwede’ then concentrated on Formula 1 with Lotus from 1973. In the Spa 1000Kms he’d emerged unhurt after a huge accident. When asked about it he looked confused: “What accident? Noooo – an accident is when you wake up in hospital…” That was Ronnie. DCN

23. Scheufele on 750

Although I’m fortunate enough to own several great cars, the 750 Monza is something special. People who are unfamiliar with the model often see it simply as a small barchetta and assume the ‘750’ in the name means it isn’t especially powerful. But those who know about them appreciate the fact that this was built purely as a racing car and is fitted with a 3-litre version of the four-cylinder engine used in the earlier 500 Mondial. It develops more than 250bhp in a car that weighs just 760kg, so it’s extremely powerful and demanding to drive well, but always extremely thrilling. Being a true competition car, it requires care and attention to keep it running properly. But the effort is more than worth it and, almost 35 years after I first drove it, I still can’t believe that I actually own a car as amazing as the 750 Monza – which, of course, got its name from Mike Hawthorn and Umberto Maglioli driving one to victory at Monza in its first race. Karl-Friedrich Scheufele, Chopard co-president

24. Rallying the troops

Jean-Claude Andruet was the only man ever to put the Cavallino on the podium in the WRC, finishing second overall on the 1982 Tour de Corse in a 308 GTB. Having tasted success at Italian and European championship level, the 308 never hit the sweet spot on the world stage until Corsica, where Andruet led overall before being overhauled by the Renault 5 Maxi Turbo of Jean Ragnotti and finishing second. Ferrari beat the entire Lancia factory squad that day – which caused a minor uproar in Italy – as well as the mighty Audi Quattro. Ferrari planned to homologate the twin-turbo 288 GTO under Group B rules, but that wasn’t to be either. AP

25. Villeneuve – by Forghieri

It’s hard to find adequate words to describe Villeneuve here, so let’s leave it to somebody infinitely better qualified: Ferrari’s legendary designer, the late Mauro Forghieri. “Gilles was a special case. I told him so many times that he was driving beyond the limits of the car. One time, he arrived for a test at Fiorano in his helicopter, in fog so thick you couldn’t see in front of you. Young Jacques was with him too. I said to him: ‘Gilles – are you completely mad? Of course we’re not testing today.’ He didn’t think there was any problem, but just got back into his helicopter and flew off again. That was Gilles.” AP

26. Gozzi the confidant

Franco Gozzi, above, left, was Mr Ferrari’s long-time ’secretary’ and confidant of over 30 years’ standing. He was a friendly, urbane figure who acted variously as press officer, works team sporting director and personal assistant. He became renowned as spokesman of ‘The Old Man’, and was regarded by many in the business, and in the media, as being the one person most likely to know where any bodies were buried… He came across to many in the wider Ferrari world as helpful and charming. DCN

Ferrari 499P number 51 crossing the finish line at Le Mans 2023 with team members leaning over the pit wall in celebration, their arms reflected on the barrier wall alongside the car — Ferrari’s comeback in the Le Mans 24 Hours, in 2023, read like a Hollywood film – with a first win since 1965

27. Winning return at Le Mans

Ferrari’s return to the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2023 as a full works effort in the top class for the first time in half a century couldn’t possibly result in a fairy-tale win, could it? It did. The new Hypercar rules had brought manufacturers flocking to sports car racing, and the 499P’s first attack on the big race featured a thrilling battle with Toyota. An electronic glitch delayed the Ferrari for a minute with a few hours remaining, but Alessandro Pier Guidi rejoined and passed Sébastien Buemi in the Toyota for the lead. Ryo Hirakawa’s dink into the Arnage barrier then ensured victory for Pier Guidi, Antonio Giovinazzi and James Calado. MS

28. The 412 T1 ‘Spitfire’

Ferrari romantics swoon for the 1995 412 T2: the last 12-cylinder F1 Ferrari and the car in which their darling Jean Alesi won his only grand prix. But its direct forbear, the 412 T1, has a place in the heart of its designer, John Barnard. It was the first JB car of his second Ferrari stint; its low-drag, organic form drew inspiration from the World War II Spitfire fighter. Barnard has modestly described it as “one of the best-looking F1 cars ever” and it became a winner at the ’94 German Grand Prix, where Gerhard Berger howled into the distance from pole, aided by the car’s prodigious top speed. It was Ferrari’s only win that year, but its first since Spain in 1990. AR

29. Prost’s rise and fall

Everything so nearly fell into place for Ferrari and Alain Prost in 1990. The John Barnard-designed 641 was a superb car, its innovative semi-automatic gearbox honed the previous season. Rejuvenated after the stressful end to his McLaren career, Prost continued his battle with former team-mate Ayrton Senna. He won five races, including a charge from 13th on the grid in Mexico, and stayed in the title fight until the penultimate race at Suzuka, where Senna barged him off the road. It all went wrong in 1991, when he fell out with the Maranello management and was booted out before the end of the season. AC

30. 1950s Brit soulmates

Recalled as soulmates, the two British stars found Ferrari at different times – Mike Hawthorn, above, left, invited for 1953-54, then Peter Collins, above, right, joining in 1956. Hawthorn was a more unpredictable figure; Collins genial, engaging and friendly. Mike was better organised as a ’semi-professional’ driver; Peter, from a wealthier background, more chaotic, signing conflicting contracts. Collins crashed fatally when challenging for the lead of the 1958 German GP. Hawthorn raced on, and became the first British world champion at year’s end. Peter’s widow Louise once told me: “They were great friends around the circuits, that’s true, but back home in England they hardly saw one another.” DCN

31. F40: 200mph road car

The last road car to be personally signed off by Enzo Ferrari was the F40 in 1987, which went from drawing board to production in just 13 months. At the time it was groundbreaking – the first road car ever to crack the 200mph barrier, and the first to use a Kevlar carbon construction. Pirelli even created the P Zero tyre especially for it. Just as Enzo wanted, the new car leaned heavily into motor sport heritage, so the utterly brutal lightweight F40 LM was also built for GT racing. It competed mainly in IMSA courtesy of Jean Alesi, Jean-Pierre Jabouille and Jacques Laffite, among others. AP

32. Hungary heart

Why win from pole at one of F1’s most sinuous tracks, when you could win from 12th on the grid? Why do things the easy way when you could do them à la Nigel Mansell? His Hungary 1989 victory, in the pioneering semi-auto Ferrari 640, was box-office even by Mansell standards; the reflex-jink pass on Ayrton Senna for the lead unforgettable. The legend of the 640 had been born with its against-all-odds debut win, for Mansell, in that year’s Brazil opener. Nigel’s Hungaroring smash-and-grab deepened its mystique. Even ‘Prince of Darkness’ John Barnard, the 640’s designer, was impressed: “For all of Nigel’s melodramas, he was a big-balls driver. That move was quite amazing.” AR

33. Jacky Ickx’s F1 years

“Scuderia Ferrari’s first world championship grand prix victory was at Silverstone in 1951, where José Froilán González took the chequered flag, and second place went to Juan Manuel Fangio in an Alfa Romeo.

“I tell you this because, when I was eight years old, I met Fangio at the 1953 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps where my parents had arranged for me to present him with some flowers for qualifying on pole position. I remember finding the whole thing very boring and begging them not to take me back to that noisy, smelly place – I didn’t want to be a racing driver, I wanted to be a gardener or a gamekeeper.

“But the reality was different. I ended up driving for Ferrari and after leaving to go to Brabham, I became the only driver to return to Ferrari after being away for a year. And the question that is always asked of people who worked for Enzo Ferrari is ‘What was he like…?’

Red Ferrari 312B Formula 1 car number 7 racing at Spa-Francorchamps in 1969 with gold wheels, exposed rear engine, and BP-branded timing booth in background surrounded by trees and fencing — The first F1 victory for Jacky Ickx came in a Ferrari 312 at Rouen midway through 1968

Ferrari, Lat/Bernard Cahier/Ercole Colombo/Getty Images, Dppi, Grand Prix Photo

“The response is not always positive, but I am one of the few people who only had a good experience with him. I considered him to be a very tender, sweet person who was also a little bit shy – and probably for a good reason: he lived in an era during which there was a great likelihood of drivers being killed. For that reason I think Ferrari found it hard to make friends with drivers, because there was a high chance he would end up getting hurt emotionally. That’s why, in my opinion, he kept a distance.

“It was for the same reason that he never showed up at any of the grands prix except for Monza, where he would sometimes watch us testing. But most of the time he would just wait by the phone in his office for a race report.

“I moved to Ferrari in 1968 and took my first Formula 1 win in the 312 at the French Grand Prix. I didn’t see that car for 58 years until this year’s Monaco Historic at which I was invited to drive it for three laps on each of the three days.

“Although the past is interesting, I don’t live in it because I think our privilege is to be in the present. But seeing that car again – just as it used to be with its white-painted exhausts that we called ’spaghetti’ – was very emotional.

“It was like meeting an old lady friend. Although, at 81, it was a lot more difficult to get in and out. But driving it? That came back, just like riding a bicycle. Unlike the complex modern racing cars, you just have a few basic instruments to watch and a manual gearbox. Get in and go.” SDB

34. Arnoux falls short

Two races out from the 1983 Formula 1 finale, René Arnoux was in touching distance of the drivers’ title. Only two points off his ex-Renault nemesis, Alain Prost, and ahead of eventual champion Nelson Piquet. It might so easily have been René, not Nelson, who finished the year as the first turbo-powered champ. It wasn’t to be – a loose ignition wire spiked what had a looked a certain win in Detroit – but ’83 was ‘peak Arnoux’. His inimitable head-down style in the stubby 126 C3 brought three wins. With Patrick Tambay alongside, ‘French Ferrari’ took another teams’ title. Arnoux, though, had maxed out. Better to remember the peaks in red than the Ligier blues. AR

35. Vettel’s fine fettle

Received Formula 1 wisdom does not place Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari tenure alongside his four Red Bull world championship years, but that is an injustice. When Vettel arrived at Maranello in 2015, Ferrari was not the force that it needed to be, yet he nearly delivered F1 titles in 2017 and ’18. Also often overlooked is the emotional, cultural and developmental leadership that Sebastian provided: rebuilding belief within Ferrari while carrying on his shoulders immense expectation. Errors crept in, but they were the by-products of his pushing those tricky cars to the limit. So Vettel’s Ferrari story is less about failure and more about valiant effort. He won 14 grands prix in Rosso Corsa; only Michael Schumacher and Niki Lauda have a better tally. MB

36. Joy of Monza ’24

Ferrari’s strategy has taken a bit of a beating in recent years but, on a sunny September day at the Italian Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc delivered a brilliant victory on a one-stopper against the two-stopping McLarens. Monza has stories, soul and character pouring out of every nook and cranny of its parkland setting, intrinsically linked to the red cars of course. Leclerc is hugely popular with the tifosi, and seeing the sea of fans below him on the podium was a memory I won’t easily forget. This also felt like a truly justified Leclerc Monza victory, since the one from 2019 will always be somewhat tainted by the controversial fuel flow controversy. KC

37. Derek Bell and Enzo’s raincoat

“I never really understood how I ended up driving for Ferrari. Being told they wanted to give me a test in a Formula 2 car was a pinch-yourself moment. I’d won races in Formula 3 and then gone quite well in F2 at the start of 1968, getting a second at Thruxton in our Church Farm Racing Brabham BT23C. Keith Ballisat from Shell called and told me I was going to test that lovely little Dino 166 after the Crystal Palace race. The problem was Jacky Ickx only goes and crashes it. So the test didn’t happen. I thought that was that, my chance gone.

“Keith was back on the phone soon after saying I had to go and meet Enzo Ferrari at Maranello. I was met at those famous gates by a little bloke who started showing me around the factory, which was completely empty. There was no one there, not a soul. When I asked the guy where everyone was, he told me it was a national holiday. I learnt over the following year that a ‘national holiday’ actually meant everyone was on strike. At one point Enzo, raincoat draped over his shoulders, comes around the corner with his assistant. My guide turns to me and says, ‘“Il Commendatore” is the one on the left.’ As if I didn’t know!

Red Ferrari Formula 1 car number 7 racing on a curving track surrounded by trees, featuring wide tires, high rear wing, and exposed engine components with driver wearing helmet in open cockpit — Derek Bell in F1 in 1968, here taking Ickx’s seat in the US GP

“I went down to Monza for a test; there was no Fiorano back then. There were a lot of drivers there and I didn’t know who half of them were. I got the drive and suddenly was racing a Ferrari at Monza in the Lotteria non-championship F2 event, which was quite a big deal. I ended up sticking it on pole.

“Driving for Ferrari was an amazing experience, even if I did a handful of races in F2, a couple of grands prix and some non-championship F1 events, and the 1969 Tasman Series, which was actually a deal Chris Amon put together. We flew the cars out to New Zealand for the opening races from England, so I ended up towing them up from Maranello with our mechanic from Church Farm, Ray Wardell, behind our van.

“In the middle of 1969, Ferrari said, ‘Thanks for nothing, go away.’ The following year I was invited to drive Jacques Swaters’ Écurie Francorchamps Ferrari 512 S at the Spa 1000Kms. I did quite well and was going to do the Le Mans 24 Hours with him, but then suddenly Enzo wanted me in one of the factory cars. I told Jacques I’d prefer to do it with him after the way I’d been treated, but he said he wouldn’t get the spares he needed if I turned down Ferrari. I’m not sure I ever forgave Ferrari for dropping me. But there’s a romance to that team, a mystique to it all. I couldn’t help but love it when I was in the middle of it.” GW

Perhaps Kimi Räikkönen’s shortest ever magazine interview came on his first day at the Scuderia…

Lat, Sutton Images, Dppi, Grand Prix Photo

38. Elusive Räikkönen

Imagine you’re sent to track down Kimi Räikkönen on his very first day as a Ferrari driver for a magazine feature – but you’re not actually allowed inside the Fiorano circuit as he drives his first laps on a chilly January day in 2007. You join the fans on the other side of the fence, hang around the factory gates: even take a quick look round the famous Cavallino restaurant at lunchtime. Nothing doing. Still, there’s enough to write about, so it’s time to pack up and leave the hotel. And then, just as the final camera has been carefully put away, the lift door opens and an elusive yet familiar figure in sunglasses steps out. Cue disbelief, followed by panic. The snapper tears into his bag to retrieve the first camera he can find – this was before everyone had camera phones – while I scamper to catch up with our quarry just as he ducks into a revolving door. “Hi Kimi,” I say frantically, pressed into the door compartment behind him, like something out of a Charlie Chaplin movie. “Hi,” he replies guardedly, before getting into a waiting car. At this point, said snapper catches us up, camera in hand. But he never got the picture. And nobody ever believed us… AP

39. The badge of honour

As a society, we like the human story of mavericks who create something grandiose and unique. Enzo Ferrari was undoubtedly a pioneer in this. Il Cavallino Rampante is arguably one of the 10 most recognised logos on the planet, and probably battles Mercedes for the top spot in the automotive world. The mystique around Enzo Ferrari comes from the fact that there aren’t many public-facing video interviews or footage at races. He was clearly someone who led a very full and sometimes controversial life marred by tragedy, both personally and in his race team. Despite brilliant books such as Richard Williams’ biography, there are so many people in the world who don’t really know anything about him. KC

40. Sartorial 330 P4

Christmas Day, 1973, and a six-year-old unwraps a Scalextric set. The cars? Ford GT40 and a swooping, red Ferrari 330 P4. The GT40 was supposed to be mine; the P4 my little sister’s – but that soon became mine too. For sheer late-1960s style, in my eyes there is nothing the sartorial equal of a car that was an update of the preceding P3, powered by a much reworked version of the Franco Rocchi-designed V12 engine. Research during my working life unveiled another gem: the P4’s 1-2-3 domination of the 1967 Daytona 24 Hours was happening while I was being born! MS

41. Terrible strategies

I’m standing in the commentary box opposite the pitlane in Brazil. Everyone knows rain is coming, and you’ll have one qualifying lap to get it right on slicks, but it’s most definitely still dry. The blankets come off and I see Charles Leclerc on intermediates, which instantly gives a flashback to the pre-emptive call Ferrari made with Kimi Räikkönen in Malaysia all those years ago, leaving him sliding around on a roasting hot track on the tyres more suited to the downpour that was coming, but hadn’t yet! It later emerges that Ferrari wanted to do the same with Carlos Sainz, but the Spaniard and his race engineer Riccardo Adami opted to take the decision into their own hands. Watching this scene unfold says as much about Ferrari’s strategy in recent years as the messes with Leclerc in Monaco in 2019 and ’22. Sometimes, you don’t need to overcomplicate things. KC

Ferrari 250 GTO front view — Is the Ferrari 250 GTO the most beautiful car ever made? Many would agree, and it’s a pleasure to drive too

42. 250 GTO: ’60s style

For most ‘car people’ of my generation and probably the two before, I feel that the choice of most beautiful road car ever made lies between a Ferrari 250 GTO and a Jaguar E-type. I absolutely love the lines of the 250 GTO and have been very lucky to have driven an original – and valuable – one around the Goodwood race circuit. The engine sounds absolutely wonderful and that wooden steering wheel and gate around the gearlever just screams 1960s style. Although the GTO version is my favourite, I also love that Ferrari produced a range of 250s including the short wheelbase (immortalised by Stirling Moss) and even convertibles. KC

43. Calm of Schetty

A great mountain-climb contender who won the European championship in the 2-litre flat-12 Ferrari 212 E in 1969, Peter Schetty featured less successfully in the cumbersome ’70 Ferrari 512 S team, before slipping seamlessly into direttore sportivo team management duties for 1971-72. After the often capricious, sometime hilarious, certainly turbulent times under Forghieri and others, Peter’s Swiss calm and competent organisation skills paid off through the works 312 PB season of 1972, when Ferrari won all 10 World Championship of Makes rounds contested. When family textile company duties called for ’73, he retired from the sport. DCN

Vintage Ferrari race cars at Le Mans Hunaudières — Bonhams, Grand Prix Photo, Afp Via Getty Images

44. Thriller of Reims ’53

Motor Sport billed this Reims classic as The race of the age, at the end of which Ferrari new boy Mike Hawthorn pipped Maserati pair Juan Manuel Fangio and José Froilán González to victory. What was officially known as the ‘Grand Prix de l’ACF’ very nearly started without any Ferraris, owing to a dispute with the organisers regarding the 12-hour sports car race on the same bill. Thank goodness the team relented at the last minute. Of this first world championship grand prix won by a Briton, our report said: “Hawthorn can feel justifiably proud at having beaten the world’s finest drivers. Let us hope that every Englishman is equally proud of his effort.” MS

Niki Lauda smiling in Ferrari racing suit — The latter half of the 1970s was a golden era for the Scuderia, with Niki Lauda winning two F1 world titles

45. Lauda – all-round 1970s hero

To my seven-year-old eyes and ears, the wailing red Ferrari leading the first grand prix I attended – Brands Hatch 1974 – seemed impossibly exotic. And when, on looking at the programme mugshots, I saw that the driver was a young man rather than a grizzled veteran, I became a fan of Niki Lauda from that day on. What dramas would play out, not only on that July afternoon, but also through the next three and a half years… Lauda, through his relationships with Luca di Montezemolo, Mauro Forghieri and revered mechanic Ermanno Cuoghi, would galvanise Ferrari from a sleeping giant to become 1975 and ’77 world champion. MS

46. Trossi’s watch legend

In May 2008, one of the most remarkable Patek Philippe chronographs ever offered for sale crossed the block at Sotheby’s Geneva – a watch that came to be known as the ‘Trossi Leggenda’ on account of it being sold in 1932 to Count Carlo Felice Trossi. A young, aristocrat driver, Trossi had just been elected president of Scuderia Ferrari and was pictured on the front cover of its periodical wearing his watch over the top of his left shirt cuff. There is little doubt that the image was not just for show: Trossi likely wore his watch at race meetings – yet he managed to preserve it in such good condition that it sold for £1.1m. SDB

47. Sainz at Silverstone

Ferrari had arguably the fastest car at the start of a new ruleset. In early 2022 the Red Bull was overweight, Mercedes was bouncing along too much and McLaren hadn’t turned the corner on its resurgence. Charles Leclerc emerged as the title contender for Ferrari but at Silverstone, Carlos Sainz delivered his first pole and victory for the team. It was a tricky race with the weather and tyre choice. In the final phase, ahead of a late safety car restart, Leclerc was in the lead but Sainz was on the preferred and fresher tyres. Inexplicably, the team asked the Spaniard to hold position, which he duly ignored. As the race went green, Sainz pulled off a great move to take a popular feel-good win while Leclerc dropped down the order. KC

48. Redman: nice boy!

The only time Lancashire’s finest met ‘The Old Man’, Mr Ferrari reached out, squeezed his cheek between thumb and forefinger and beamed, “Nice boy.” Brian repaid the approval by co-driving 312 PBs with Art Merzario to win at Spa and Jacky Ickx at the Österreichring in 1972, then with Ickx again at Monza and Nürburgring ’73. Brian rated the ’72 Ferraris but the ’73 PBs, with little development and unpredictable handling, less so. Perhaps his most vivid memory is of team orders to secure himself and Ickx victory at Nürburgring, Merzario forcibly removed from his second-placed car by the team during a pitstop. DCN

49. Myth of Monza ’56

The handover of his Ferrari D50 to Juan Manuel Fangio by Peter Collins at Monza has gone down in history as one of the sport’s most selfless acts. Collins had foregone his crowning as world champion, gifting it to Fangio, whose own car, above, had succumbed to steering arm failure. But it doesn’t quite stack up. Collins, part of a Ferrari team suffering tyre problems due to the concrete Monza banking, would have had to pass the Maserati of Stirling Moss for victory to even equal Fangio’s points total. Motor Sport never acknowledged the act of Collins. “I am not saying that Collins is not a good driver,” sniffed Denis Jenkinson, “but this has been his first season of first-line racing and no one in their right mind would say he was a better grand prix driver than Moss.” MS

50. Jean Alesi: Ferrari is a country

“Ferrari is not just a team, it’s a country. You belong to a world where, as soon you are driving for Ferrari, it becomes Italian. Even Lewis [Hamilton], I’m sure they talk to him in Italian, the fans, and adopt him. And it stays forever.

Jean Alesi driving the Ferrari 412 T2 in Canada — Strap into a Ferrari seat and you are forever associated with the marque, says Jean Alesi

“Now it’s been a long time I’m not driving for Ferrari, but when people see me in a paddock, they identify me as a Ferrari driver. There are so many moments in the time you are there, not maybe related to a race, where there is this magic of Ferrari. Even if you are with your girlfriend and having a good time not going fast on the motorway, the police go next to you, they recognise you, and they ask you to go faster.

“Going from Avignon to Maranello I had to stop a lot at the customs in Ventimiglia. Every single time I had to make a racing start!” AC

Close-up of a smiling Michael Schumacher wearing a red cap — Michael Schumacher’s 11 seasons at Ferrari brought five F1 world titles to add to his brace with Benetton

Lat Images, Getty Images, Dppi, Grand Prix Photo

51. Schumacher turns it all around

I remember hearing about Michael Schumacher leaving Benetton for Ferrari in the middle of 1995 and wondering, “Why on earth would he do that?” Ferrari had won two races in the previous five seasons, while Michael had dominated in 1995, with nine victories. As a simple-minded 11-year-old, I didn’t understand what he was doing but, as an adult looking back, there is no doubt that his legacy is infinitely greater for having delivered those long-awaited successes between 2000 and 2004. Michael wringing the red car’s neck around Monaco or Imola in 1996 in qualifying are awe-inspiring videos that I often look up online. Together with Jean Todt, he built that super-team with Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne. If a leader like Schumacher hadn’t gone to Ferrari and attracted all that top engineering talent, I genuinely don’t know how many more years it would have taken before the team got back to the top. In the 20 years since he left, Ferrari has won just one drivers’ title despite great budget and infrastructure… KC

52. Enzo and the rear-engined ‘oxcarts’

Enzo Ferrari was fond of pronouncements: “The ox does not push the cart,” was one favourite. At practice for the 1958 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, above, John Cooper was invited to join Ferrari and French journalist Bernard Cahier for a trackside lunch, a surprise for the Englishman, since Ferrari had recently dismissed him as a mere garagista. “I for one will never build a rear-engine grand prix car,” pronounced ‘Il Commendatore’, according to 1977 book Grand Prix Carpet-Bagger by John Cooper with John Bentley. “You are entitled to your opinion Signor Cooper, but I have the experience.” The rest is history. PG

53. Stratospheric…

It seems a dream combination: Lancia, a huge force in rallying; engines from Ferrari; a chassis from Giampaolo Dallara, eventually to become motor sport’s dominant customer single-seater constructor. The LC2 of 1983-86 was also a beautiful Group C car, underdog against the Porsche 956/962 steamroller. Lancia’s Stratos rally car, above, had also been powered by Ferrari (the 2.4 Dino V6), but this weapon featured the twin-turbocharged, 2.6 308C V8. Unreliability meant it won just three top-level races but it was so quick. MS

54. Brooks: a happy team

F1 runner-up in 1959 with Ferrari, Tony Brooks, had lunch with Simon Taylor in the May 2013 Motor Sport. “Ferrari was always a happy team and the mechanics were fun,” he related. “If you won a race you’d think you’d won the championship. And the drivers, Phil Hill, Dan Gurney, Cliff Allison, we were all competitive but easy-going. Jean Behra did his own thing; he didn’t speak English and his Italian wasn’t good. The longest conversation I had with him is when he tried to persuade me, with gestures, that the Testa Rossa he’d crashed at the Targa Florio was OK for me to take over.” MS

55. Close shave for Moss

The British superstar’s innate talent was recognised in Italy long before home entrants latched on. Mr Ferrari asked him to sign for 1952, but first offered a drive in the 1951 Bari Grand Prix. Stirling arrived to drive “a foreign car for the first time”. But at Ferrari’s garage he learned Piero Taruffi would be driving instead. Rebuffed, Moss tried David Murray’s private 1949 Ferrari 166, muddled its centre throttle position and crashed. For seven long years he was determined to beat “those bloody Ferraris”. But at Nassau in 1957 his assigned car was damaged, and privateer Jan de Vroom loaned his Ferrari 290 S sports car instead – Moss won two races. He happily drove the Rob Walker/Dick Wilkins 250 GT SWB to win the 1960 Goodwood TT and in ’61 he was victorious again, above. He would have had a Walker-prepared F1 ’sharknose’ for ’62. But what an outclassed disaster that would have been… DCN

56. Form over function

The purity of Ferrari’s purpose, to go racing to win, and to fund racing by selling road cars, was so clear to see. On track, they were beautiful forms with a minimum of sponsor names, simple white numbers and that classic Prancing Horse badge. It mattered how good the cars looked. When the bodies were hand-formed by artisans they couldn’t fail to look great. Particularly, the cars from Mauro Forghieri and John Barnard attracted me because they looked so good. The Ferrari 640 really appealed to me as a designer. Someone described it as “looking like a pebble washed by the sea”. What could be better? PS

57. Alonso’s near-misses

Aside from Felipe Massa, no driver has come as close as Fernando Alonso did to delivering a Formula 1 world championship for Ferrari, and yet fail to do so. The Spaniard looked like a perfect fit when he arrived to replace Kimi Räikkönen in 2010. He won the hearts of the tifosi with victory first time out in Bahrain, only to cede the title to Sebastian Vettel at the Abu Dhabi finale owing to a poor strategy call. He would lose a second final race showdown to the German in 2012. Two years later, and after five fruitless seasons, he departed following a falling out with the management. AC

58. Perfection of 312 T2

It was some time in late 1975 when I saw the picture on the front of my uncle’s copy of Motoring News. Ferrari’s new 312 T2 had been launched at Fiorano; upon its sidepods sat Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni; between them a white cockpit framed by Italian red-and-green pinstripes; the white radiator ducts; the red ‘deflectors’ ahead of the front wheels. This was exactly how a racing car should look. To its breathtaking beauty were added a Lauda title – and his shocking accident at the Nürburgring in 1976. It raced on into early ’78, Carlos Reutemann adding victory at Rio before the T3 replaced it. MS

59. Andretti: from Ascari to turbo

“When Alberto Ascari won the world championship in 1952, Aldo [Mario Andretti’s twin] and I were 12. Of course, there was Maserati and so forth, but there was always something magic about Ferrari. We gravitated to Ascari for some reason, and he was our absolute idol.

“In 1954 some friends took us to Monza and the die was cast! And to be honest with you, the impossible dream began. Going to America was a total blessing for us, because we could have never had the opportunity that we had there.

“I first met Mr Ferrari at the 1969 Monza 1000Kms, when I was teamed up with Chris Amon. in practice I dinged the front end, just the bodywork, but I thought, ‘Oh, no.’ As I pulled into the pits he had a smile on his face. I found this out later – he never faulted a driver that falls out. He knew you were trying.

Mario Andretti waving on the podium with the Questor GP trophy — After Mario Andretti’s win for Ferrari in the 1971 South African GP, he followed it up with victory here in California’s Questor GP

Lat, Klemantaski/Getty Images, Grand Prix Photo, Sutton Images

“So I had a relationship with Ferrari, and I asked if they’d be interested in me joining the F1 team in ’71. South Africa was the first race, and I won that. The Questor GP – I’ll tell you what, I won that race against Jackie Stewart. Jackie was the man! The 312 B was a good car – the balance it maintained. I could not afford to go F1 racing full-time. After I won South Africa and the Questor GP, Enzo called me at the factory and said, ‘This is all yours.’ And I couldn’t. Not that I dwelled on that, but deep down, I felt the responsibility – I had a young family.

“The one thing that I always held dear about Enzo was that we spoke directly. None of the drivers ever dealt directly with him, except for me, and that’s what I loved.

“In 1982 he called and asked me to do Monza and Vegas. I said ‘Yes’ in a nano-second! I was out of F1 that whole season, and I had never driven an F1 turbo. It felt good. I realised I was on pole because people started running on the track. I figured something good must have happened! In the race I lost a turbo, but at least I got a podium.

“To me, there was something surreal about Enzo, and just the fact that we could speak directly to one another calmly and so forth, and understand each other, was just something I always held so dear. I’m so happy that at least I had those moments.” AC

60. AF Corse: endurance enablers

Batti Pregliasco, Team manager

“I think sometimes it’s easy to not realise just how much Ferrari means to people, particularly in Italy but all over the world. When you consider that the Ferrari and AF Corse story is now over a quarter of a century old and has raced in so many championships and achieved a great deal, it holds a cool place in the story of the Prancing Horse.

“I raced myself and was also working with the Ferrari Challenge and developing the Ferrari 360. But the switch to endurance racing with the factory came in 2000/2001 when Antonello [Coletta], together with the management of Ferrari, decided to push the endurance side.

“Antonello is a key figure in Ferrari in endurance, and the other key person is Amato [Ferrari], because his team was able to deliver a service in a higher level of professionalism.

“Sports car racing is a significant chapter of 75 years of history at Ferrari. Ferrari is creating these amazing things like the recent Le Mans wins and the WEC title, while also running many cars in championships around the world.”

Giuseppe Petrotta, Managing/Technical Director

“I worked with Osella in F1 in the 1980s and then joined Ferrari in 1991. As an Italian, Ferrari is in my soul. It means a great deal to be representing the brand all over the world and I know all my colleagues at AF Corse feel the same way. When we decided to take the decision to do the Hypercar project with the 499P, it was based on a crew of people from AF Corse and some Ferrari engineers. I think the history that Ferrari had achieved made it realistic for everybody to decide to go into Hypercar. Nobody could imagine something like the results we got, because winning Le Mans in the first year and then the championships [in 2025] is something very special. SS

61. The thrilling 288 GTO

The 288 GTO was unveiled at the Geneva Salon in March 1984 with the numbers standing for 2.8 litres and eight (turbocharged) cylinders, and the letters for Gran Turismo Omologato. Longer and wider than the far tamer 328, its engine sat longitudinally with the five-speed transaxle and limited-slip differential mounted behind it – a classic race car layout. At the time, the 288 GTO was the most powerful road car Ferrari had ever offered, producing around 400bhp in standard tune, but capable of being tweaked to more than 600 in full race trim. With a top speed of around 190mph, it was probably the quickest street-legal car you could find in 1984 and remains both thrilling and usable today. SDB

62. Reutemann magic

Carlos Reutemann, a Ferrari driver in 1977 and ’78, was my childhood hero all those years ago and he bewitched me as much for his enigmatic lapses in form as for the scintillatingly dominant performances that made me forgive him all his frailties. I was at the 1978 British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, jumping to my feet as, before my awe-struck eyes, he hurled his gorgeous Ferrari 312 T3 past archrival Niki Lauda’s Brabham BT46 to victory. It was a magnificent drive – and, more than that for me at least, the freeze-frame image of that brave and brilliant passing manoeuvre is and will always be a memory indelible in my mind’s eye. MB

Enzo Ferrari shaking hands with carrozziere Pinin Farina turns out nicely — Rm Sotheby’s, Dppi, Getty Images

63. Pinin Farina’s intro

In 1951, when Pinin Farina invited Enzo Ferrari to the Cavallino San Marziano in Tortona, equidistant between Turin and Modena, he found him “closed as a walnut, disdaining the bonds the world proffered”. But the genial carrozziere prised him open, “using the common language of the machine shop and the background music made by engines on a test bench”. As Ferrari observed, they were a perfect fit: “One of us was looking for a famous and beautiful woman to dress, and the other was looking for a world-class couturier to dress her.” Just one month later, at the Paris Salon d’Auto, their first effort, the 212 Inter Cabriolet, was revealed. Ferrari’s collaboration with Pininfarina would long outlive both men. PG

64. Rossi’s bid for F1

When Michael met Valentino at Valencia’s Circuit Ricardo Tormo in January 2006, the chill of winter was eased by the luminosity of twin megastars. Ferrari was running a full pre-season test for its seven-time champion Michael Schumacher, alongside a fact-finding programme for the equally stellar Valentino Rossi, who continued his flirtation with a career switch from motorcycles. Rossi steered a 2004 Ferrari, its 3-litre V10 dialled down to mimic outputs of the 2.4-litre V8s mandated for ’06. He was scrappy – multiple spins – but quick. “Hats off to you for courage,” wrote Jarno Trulli in an open letter to Italy’s La Gazzetta dello Sport. AR

Jody Scheckter waving on the podium holding a bouquet of flowers — Jody Scheckter, hand raised after a win at Zolder in 1979; he’d take the title at Monza

65. Scarlet Scheckter

One season in scarlet was all it took for Jody Scheckter to become a Ferrari world champion. By 1979, this former firebrand had mixed pugnacious pace with composure to create a blend potent enough to lead the marque to a title double. His 312 T4 was long in the tooth and already losing out to either turbo power or ground-effect aero. But the flat-12 had grunt and reliability to deliver three wins apiece for Jody and Gilles Villeneuve. The sweetest came at Monza, where Ferrari secured both championships: “Gilles was behind me and there was still a chance that he could win the title, but he gave me his word that he wouldn’t try to pass and he had more integrity than anyone else I’ve ever met.” AR

66. Andrea Bertolini’s dream job

“When I was growing up, I could hear the cars testing at Fiorano if the wind was in the right direction, even inside our family apartment. We lived six kilometres away. I could tell if it was a V12 or a V10. I didn’t have any choice but to fall in love with Ferrari. But it was a good choice, I think.

“Back then, Fiorano was more open than it is now; there was a fence rather than a wall around it. The tifosi would build these structures, like castles, to be able to see the cars better. When I was a kid, if my dad had a spare hour in the afternoon, he would take me to the track to watch. They used to say on the local radio who was testing that day. That’s how we would find out if an F1 car was running.

“I loved watching and listening to the cars, and every lap I would wave to the driver. I remember when I was about 10 or 11, Michele Alboreto was testing. It was probably 1984 or ’85. On his in-lap at the end of the day, Michele waved. Maybe he was waving to everybody, but in my mind he was waving to me and not the 399 other people. The emotion I felt that day was so strong.

AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 racing hard on track — AF Corse stalwart Andrea Bertolini has admired Ferrari since his childhood days – here racing a 296 GT3 at Misano in 2024

“Even more emotional was driving an F1 car at Fiorano for the first time in 2000 – it was the 1995 412 T2 – especially when I went through the corner where Michele had waved all those years before. I still feel it today whenever I drive at Fiorano and think of that kid watching from behind the fence. That’s why whenever I am testing, I ask the engineers when the last run of the morning or the afternoon is going to be, and on the last lap of my run, I always wave to the fans. I know what it means to them to have a connection with the drivers.

“When I was testing for the F1 team, the guys who looked after us asked me why I wanted a new pair of gloves every time I drove. It was because at the end of the day I would take out the service car and see the tifosi. If I saw some children, I would give one glove to one kid and the other one to another.

“My dream was to be a racing driver, but to dream to be a Ferrari driver was too big. I eventually did that, though I came to it a different way. My family could not support my dreams, but I got my opportunity through the Ferrari family. And now I have driven almost every type of Ferrari F1 car ever built.” GW

Enzo Ferrari watching track action with arms crossed at Monza — Bernard Cahier/Getty Image

67. Enzo Ferrari

In Turin, on a freezing night in the winter of 1918, de-mobbed, bereaved, with few skills beyond re-shoeing horses, Enzo Ferrari found himself in the Parco del Valentino next to the Po river. He swept a layer of snow off a bench and lay down. “Overcome by loneliness and despair, I wept.” After that, nothing got in his way, not fascism, nor the Depression, or World War II. A self-identified ‘agitator of men’, he excelled at team management, for Alfa Romeo, and for his own Scuderia. Surveying the bombed ruins of his works in 1945, he resolved to build his own V12 racing car.

The next time he visited the Parco del Valentino, almost 30 years later, it was to see his own car win the 1947 Turin Grand Prix. “I went and sat on that same bench. The tears I shed that day were of a very different kind.” PG

68. Rubens Barrichello: thumbs up for the F2002

“What I remember from 2002 was being told how much the car would be better. And it corresponded so well when it went to the race track, it was amazing how it developed. They said it was 1.5sec or something faster.

“It was so much better than the 2001 car. It was an amazing achievement. I had a feeling that it was the best ever translation from wind tunnel to track that I had in any car of my life. If you take the Brawn in 2009, the expectations were high, and it beat all that they had in mind. But this 2002 car was accurate. It was like having Monaco wings with a car that flew like on the Monza straight!

Rubens Barrichello driving the dominant Ferrari F2002 on track — Following team orders at Ferrari had a psychological effect on Rubens Barrichello, but he still looks back at the time with fondness

“In Austria people got to know what I was suffering from for a long time. But for me, the main point was that the year before I had to let Michael [Schumacher] by. David Coulthard won the race, and they made me change places with Michael, for him to go second. At the end of the race, I went to talk to them, and I said, ‘If I was winning would you have asked the same way?’ They said, ‘Never. We would never ask you to leave first place.’ I said, ‘OK’.

“That was exactly what happened the year after, and that’s what bothered me, more than anything else. What I eventually found out was that it was written in Michael’s contract, but not in mine. In mine, there wasn’t anything that said you’ve got to let him by. So that’s why I eventually decided that I was going to do it in front of everyone.

“Obviously, the one that suffered the most was me, because it was tough, psychologically, to see that people didn’t follow their hearts or their words that day. I’ve always been more emotional, and less rational. And for me, it matters what people say. It’s almost like I don’t have a contract for so many things, for me it’s done by words. For me, it was tough. I feel honoured that I was part of Ferrari. I kept saying they will see my work and then they’re going to let me do whatever I think is achievable. Then I saw that it wasn’t going to happen. That’s why I left. But it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

“It was just that Michael Schumacher had this protection at Ferrari. And I saw that I wasn’t going to get any further. So I said, ‘OK, the time has come, and then I will leave.’ But I had the best time of my life for sure, because it was something else.” AC

69. The semi-auto 641

In 1989, Ferrari attempted to strike back at McLaren’s dominance, and John Barnard’s 640 pioneered the semi-automatic gearbox and paddle shifts in F1. Unreliability cost results and, the following year, Barnard was gone, but he and the team had already penned the 641, which in my opinion is the most beautiful F1 car of all. Alain Prost fought a brilliant campaign against Ayrton Senna. The title battle ended in the gravel at the first corner in Japan, but the 641 signed off with a double podium in Adelaide after Ferrari’s most competitive season since ’82. KC

70. Hill’s climb to glory

Like Dan Gurney, Phil Hill, below, was a product of a flourishing US West Coast sports car scene of the 1950s at the wheel of Ferrari machinery. Little could he guess that by 1961 he would become his nation’s first world champion in F1 machinery. Hill’s tragic title, clinched at Monza when team-mate Wolfgang von Trips lost his life, was assured with the last of what would be just three points-paying grand prix wins. His sports car success with Ferrari easily outweighed this, capped by three Le Mans 24 Hours wins (1958, ’61, ’62) with Belgian great Olivier Gendebien. MS

71. The ultra-clean Ferrari 126 C2

Is the 126 C2 the best-looking Ferrari F1 car ever? It certainly was to my 15-year-old eyes. The ultra-clean lines of the Harvey Postlethwaite-designed machine ingrained themselves a place deep in my psyche even before the tragedy of the 1982 season unfolded. It should have won more than just the constructors’ title; one or other of Gilles Villeneuve or Didier Pironi would, to my mind, have become world champion in what was the best package that year. There were two wins for Pironi and one for Patrick Tambay. Yet no matter how good it was, the 126 C2 is, most of all, a thing of beauty. My eyes still tell me that today. GW

Front view of the distinctive Ferrari 156 Sharknose race car at Monaco with a mechanic working on it — Carlo Chiti’s Ferrari 156 ‘sharknose’ made its world championship debut at Monaco in 1961

Bernard Cahier//Ercole Colombo/Klemantaski/Getty Images, Dppi, Rm Auctions

72. The 156 shark attack

A year after Scuderia Ferrari at last adopted rear-engined design, Carlo Chiti developed ’sharknose’-bodied successors for the new 1961 1.5-litre Formula 1. He also perfected a new 120-degree V6, lighter than not only the 65-degree Dino unit but also the rival British four-cylinder Climax FPF. Drivers Phil Hill, ‘Taffy’ von Trips and Richie Ginther were joined by Giancarlo Baghetti and later Ricardo Rodríguez. Baghetti’s car was run by the Federation of Italian Teams, and its ’sharknose’ won its debut Syracuse GP. At Naples he won again… and in the French GP he sensationally won too. Sharknoses qualified on pole everywhere they went but Monaco, where Moss took victory for Lotus. Poor von Trips lost his life at Monza, where Hill became the sport’s first American world champion. Sharknoses raced on through 1962, but could not match the latest British V8s from BRM and Climax. No original cars survive. DCN

73. ‘Furia’ Forghieri

Nicknamed ‘Furia’ by Ferrari’s technical staff, Mauro, right, was effectively a rookie engineer – son of long-serving Ferrari machinist Reclus Forghieri – given a unique chance by ‘The Old Man’ when preceding direttore tecnico Carlo Chiti was fired late in 1961. Then only 27, Forghieri learned apace, benefitted from the backing of veteran consultant engineer Vittorio Jano, and repaid Mr Ferrari’s faith many times over. But as an intensely hard worker utterly dedicated to his role, Forghieri always had an extremely short fuse. Even Mr Ferrari himself could become the target; Furia was also fearless if he felt criticism was due. Sometimes it was not. As The Old Man aged and fresh engineering blood was brought in, the love affair waned and Mauro sought new horizons, with both Lamborghini and Bugatti. DCN

74. The 500’s dominance

When Alfa Romeo opted out of racing at the end of 1951, the FIA swapped world championship status to unsupercharged 2-litre Formula 2 for 1952-53. Alberto Ascari, below, and Ferrari’s four-cylinder 500s ran riot. These Aurelio Lampredi-designed cars dominated, with 30 wins from 33 races entered, 81 finishes from 109 starts, Ascari becoming the first double world champion driver through 1952-53. At least six, possibly seven, works 500s appeared, plus five Starlet customer cars. All but one were later uprated as 2.5-litre Ferrari 625s for the new F1 of 1954-57. Simple and effective – these cars cemented the infant Ferrari marque’s reputation. DCN

75. 365 GTB/4 Daytona

There are faster Ferraris, rarer Ferraris, and certainly more technologically sophisticated Ferraris, but few possess the operatic charisma of the 365 GTB/4 Daytona. It arrived at a time, 1968, when the mid-engined 1966 Lamborghini Miura had already begun to make front-engined supercars look a bit old-fashioned, yet still it embodied everything Maranello stood for: speed, style and unapologetic excess. Its long, tapering bonnet concealed a masterpiece of a Colombo V12 engine, while its taut but aggressive lines aft of its A-pillar spoke of intent rather than ornamentation. When I first saw one, aged 12, I asked the owner if he’d give me a spin in it. He did, hurling it and me around empty West Sussex B-roads. It is possible that I have never been happier. MB

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