How Enzo Ferrari put an end to his former employer’s era of grand prix supremacy

“Colombo! I’m tired of making machine tools. I want to go back to making race cars.”

Whether or not Enzo Ferrari really summoned his old colleague Gioacchino Colombo to his Modena workshop in July 1945 and uttered these words no longer matters. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend – and this exchange is a pillar of the myth of the Ferrari marque’s creation.

In the mid-1930s, Ferrari was operating Alfa Romeo’s works racing team, albeit under the Scuderia Ferrari title, while Colombo was an assistant to the eminent Hungarian-born engineer Vittorio Jano, architect of Alfa’s greatest grand prix cars.

The sizeable challenge facing them was Nazi Germany’s colossal investment in Mercedes’ and Auto Union’s grand prix programmes, co-opting motor racing as a propaganda project. Lap times were slashed and the Italian side, outspent but still carrying the weight of national expectations, collapsed into infighting.

Jano was dismissed, while Ferrari sought to circumvent inevitable defeat by directing Colombo to design a new car with a 1.5-litre supercharged engine to contest the ‘voiturette’ sub-class, thereby avoiding direct competition with the Germans even when they were sharing the same track. Nobody in the corridors of power was fooled and, since Alfa Romeo was government-owned, the dissatisfaction gained considerable momentum as it rolled downhill.

During a rare moment of solvency, Alfa’s managing director Ugo Gobbato bought Ferrari out in December 1937, renaming the team Alfa Corse and making it the bailiwick of Wilfredo Ricart, chief engineer of the ‘special projects’ department.

Ferrari was now merely an employee, a fact brought home when trucks arrived in Modena the following January to collect the tools and components pertaining to the new Tipo 158 ‘Alfetta’ voiturettes and transport them to Alfa Romeo’s Portello facility.

While some scepticism remains over the supposed rivalry depicted in Ferrari’s memoir My Terrible Joys, Enzo’s nose was sufficiently put out by Ricart’s presence, along with continued clashes with Gobbato, that the working arrangement lasted just 18 months. 

Alfa Romeo raced under the Scuderia Ferrari banner in the mid-1930s

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“In the end I was sacked,” Ferrari wrote, “which seemed to be the only logical solution to the situation that had developed. In 1939 came my divorce from Alfa Romeo. I sold the cars to Gobbato and he fired me. With the settlement after my 20 years, and with my savings, I transformed the Scuderia into a small car factory.”

The onset of war then made the four-year non-compete clause of his deal irrelevant as Ferrari’s workshop was co-opted into the war effort, while Ricart’s ambitious grand prix car designs barely advanced beyond the prototype stage.

The 158 had shown encouraging pace in early voiturette races and the nine extant cars sat out the hostilities in pieces, hidden from the view of those who might loot or melt them down for munitions. But while motor racing began again remarkably quickly after the war – the Coupe des Prisonniers was held in the Bois de Boulougne just a week after Japan’s surrender in September 1945 – Alfa Romeo was in no position to return to the track at that point.

The company’s association with the fascist government of a country that had then switched sides during the war was problematic

The company’s association with the fascist government of a country that had then switched sides during the war was problematic; Gobbato was murdered by an employee on the day of Mussolini’s execution.

Anyone with links to the fascist party was examined, so Colombo was undergoing what he described as “a temporary suspension, caused by political misunderstandings” when he received the unexpected call from Ferrari. Hastening from Milan to Modena, Colombo was welcomed with a minimum of ceremony. It was, he recalled, “as if he [Enzo] were just picking up a conversation where it had been left off”.

Ferrari wanted to know what configuration Colombo would choose for a 1.5-litre racing engine. Given that any competition in the immediate future would have to rely predominantly on cars that had survived the war, a formula based on voiturette principles was a relatively safe bet.

“Maserati has a first-class four-cylinder, the English have the six-cylinder ERA, and Alfa Romeo has the eight-cylinder,” Colombo replied. “In my view, you should be building a 12-cylinder.”

"My dear Colombo, you read my mind."

Short-wheelbase 125 Thin Wall Special crashed at Silverstone in 1949. Post-race strip-down was a shocker

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Ferrari claimed to have a historic affinity for the music of a V12 but, given the scarcity of resources in the post-war period, he didn’t want the engineering to be overly elaborate. Merely to be contemplating such a project at a time when the echoes of bombs had barely faded was an act of huge ambition and bravado. Over a convivial luncheon the two men agreed a fee and Colombo departed, his head abuzz with ideas.

According to Colombo’s account, while holidaying with his family that August he sat under a tree and sketched out the first concept drawings for the V12: a 60-degree V angle, a single camshaft, one rocker gear per valve, one spark plug per cylinder mounted within the V. So far, so conventional. Unusual for the time – especially in the context of the ‘undersquare’ straight-eight Colombo had designed for the Tipo 158 – was the ‘oversquare’ bore/stroke of 58x52.5mm per cylinder, with a generous 90mm bore spacing to allow for enlarged displacements down the line.

Ferrari had spent part of his settlement from Alfa Romeo acquiring land for a new workshop in the small town of Maranello, south of Modena. Now he recruited talented engineers to assist the process of turning concept into reality: Colombo’s erstwhile colleague Angelo Nasi designed a five-speed transmission, while Giuseppe Busso and Aurelio Lampredi brought experience from the aero engine field.

Did word get around in the engineering community? Ferrari’s circumvention of his severance deal by building two race cars under the Auto Avio Costruzioni name in 1940 had not gone unnoticed. Perhaps Colombo was indeed exonerated; accounts differ but, by November 1945, he had been recalled by Alfa Romeo, leaving the “stubborn but competent” Busso as chief engineer.

Ferrari’s first V12 ran in September 1946 but it would be another four years – and a change of engine concept – before Enzo’s company would properly be able to stand toe-to-toe with his old employers at grand prix level.

Meanwhile, the re-established Alfa Corse returned to the field with a reconstituted fleet of 158s. After a low-key start – clutch issues eliminated Jean-Pierre Wimille and Giuseppe Farina in the Rene le Begue Cup that June – Alfa sent four cars to July’s high-profile Grand Prix des Nations event in Geneva.

Two had been modified with two-stage Roots superchargers, taking power from 220bhp at 7500rpm to around 260bhp. They dominated both heats and finished 1-2-3 in the final, despite Maserati’s Tazio Nuvolari taking Wimille out with an egregious chop in heat two.

Further refinements for 1947, centring around a larger primary ‘blower’, brought power to 350bhp, and the bodywork was revised around a lower-riding chassis. The Alfetta now looked a very different car compared with its pre-war incarnation and dominated the majority of races for which it was entered; as predicted, ‘Formula A’, soon to morph into Formula 1 (the exact moment lost in a flurry of contradictory primary sources), adopted 1.5-litre supercharged and 4.5-litre naturally aspirated engines as its base.

A pair of 375s raced for the first time at Monza in 1950, driven by Dorino Serafini and Alberto Ascari

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In Maranello, development of the V12 continued to drag as Ferrari’s engineers struggled to achieve the crankshaft speeds required to unlock its potential. The figure of 72bhp at 5400rpm was quoted in the first sales brochure for the 125 Sport model, in which Franco Cortese made the new Ferrari company’s competitive debut at Piacenza in May 1947.

While this kind of output was adequate for local events – Cortese was leading when his fuel pump broke, then won on the car’s next outing two weeks later – it was never going to cut it on the international stage.

Adopting better crankshaft-bearing materials would prove the solution to the problem – in theory. The British Vandervell company’s patented ‘thinwall’ bearings offered material technology unavailable in Italy at this time and enabled Ferrari to reach 7000rpm. Neverthless Busso fell out of favour with Enzo, who brought Colombo back as a freelance consultant in September 1947, prompting Busso to leave… for Alfa Romeo.

The combination of narrow power band, short wheelbase and primitive suspension was a recipe for swapping ends unpredictably

The rivalry between Ferrari and his old employer was playing out in personnel movements even before they met on track. 

Among Colombo’s first tasks was to complete work begun by Busso on a supercharged version of the V12 for grand prix racing – and a car in which to place it. The 125 F1, as it became known, had many mechanical similarities to the 158: both rode on transverse leaf springs at the front, with the rear wheels independently suspended via swinging axles. But the Ferrari’s 342mm shorter wheelbase promised greater agility.

In practice, the combination of narrow power band, short wheelbase and primitive suspension (independent movement with swing axles came at the cost of a high roll centre and substantial camber changes) was a recipe for swapping ends unpredictably. Alfa Corse’s pre-eminence continued through 1948, weathering the loss of Achille Varzi in a fatal accident in practice for the Swiss Grand Prix.

Maserati’s 4CL, another pre-war voiturette given new life through technical development, remained the car of choice for privateers in a field where other options were fairly limited. When the 125 F1 finally made its maiden competitive appearance in the Italian Grand Prix at Valentino Park in Turin that September, Raymond Sommer drove one to third place… two laps down on Wimille’s victorious Alfetta.

History has yet to alight on a definitive rationale for Alfa Corse’s withdrawal from racing in 1949, but the hiatus at least enabled Ferrari to win some races as the 125 F1 was improved with a two-stage supercharger and twin-cam heads, although lengthening the wheelbase by 160mm didn’t tame its wayward handling. Power was now 280bhp at 8000rpm but durability and the narrow power band remained problematic, an issue that would be brought to a head by a confrontation with a customer.

Fangio aced the first 1950 Alfa/Ferrari encounter in Monaco following first-lap chaos

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Enzo Ferrari was not a man who gave much concern to such matters, but this was no ordinary customer. Industrialist Guy Anthony ‘Tony’ Vandervell, whose bearings had spared Ferrari much embarrassment, was an early supporter of pre-war racer Raymond Mays’ British Racing Motors project.

By 1949, frustrated with its lack of progress, Vandervell bought a short-wheelbase 125 F1 – thumping desks at the Board of Trade to secure an import licence for it – so BRM could see how a contemporary grand prix car worked. Mays raced it, painted green and entered as the Thin Wall Special, in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone – and was so exercised by its power delivery and snappy handling that he handed it over to Ken Richardson, who promptly crashed it.

Vandervell returned the car to Ferrari, but not before his own engineers had stripped it down and noted a catalogue of horrors, including shoddily finished engine internals and obviously well-worn components.

The chastening encounter with Vandervell that followed was one of two pivotal events that year to shape Ferrari’s thinking. At the Belgian Grand Prix in June, the works 125 F1s of Luigi Villoresi and Alberto Ascari, and the private entry of Peter Whitehead, finished second, third and fourth to Louis Rosier’s palpably slower Talbot-Lago. Relatively ponderous as the T26C was, its 4.5-litre naturally aspirated six-cylinder engine was less thirsty, and Rosier gained track position when the supercharged cars stopped for fuel.

That summer, Ferrari accepted a proposal from Lampredi to design a new large-displacement V12, a decision that set in motion Colombo’s return to – where else? – Alfa Romeo. It never paid to burn bridges in the Italian engineering community – as Lampredi well knew, having already left Ferrari once after a personality clash with Busso and been personally recalled by Enzo once that engineer had been given the heave-ho.

While the ultimate destination of the new V12 was 4.5 litres, the journey involved two intermediate displacements because the existing drivetrain also required modification to accept the greater torque output.

Lampredi followed many of the Colombo engine’s architectural principles, including the V angle and initial single-cam-per-bank layout, but specified a longer block with 108mm bore centres to allow for upscaling, and a thicker crankcase for superior durability. Stage one was 3.3 litres, christened the 275 since that was the swept volume in cubic centimetres of a single cylinder.

Fangio clinches the 1951 world championship crown in the Spanish Grand Prix at Pedralbes

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Two prototypes were ready by April 1950 and raced in the Mille Miglia sportscar enduro, but both cars failed to finish and Ferrari held off deploying the engine in grands prix, skipping the opening round of the new world championship at Silverstone to focus on preparing the supercharged cars for the more financially lucrative Monaco event. 

Effectively this was a capitulation to inevitable defeat at the former aerodrome, though official accounts have it that Enzo was insufficiently tempted by the ‘starting money’ on offer. In March, Alfa Romeo had signalled its return, tempted by the marketing value of the world championship concept; scant weeks later, in grotty conditions at the Ospedaletti street circuit, a single Alfetta driven by Juan Manuel Fangio trounced a four-car Ferrari entry in the non-championship San Remo Grand Prix. 

The deaths of Varzi, Wimille and Carlo Felice Trossi required a change of cast at Alfa Corse, and for 1950 the company fielded the fastest drivers it could afford: Farina, Fangio and Luigi Fagioli. For the British GP it diplomatically offered a fourth car to local favourite Reg Parnell. Ferrari’s absence was perhaps less of a bind for the patriotic crowd than the late withdrawal of BRM; it was a disappointment to which they would have to become accustomed.

In Monaco the race was thrown into chaos towards the end of the opening lap, when a freakishly large wave breached the balustrade at Tabac and flooded the road

Against a patchy field that included just one works Maserati, Alfa annexed the podium. Fourth-placed Yves Giraud-Cabantous was two laps down in his Talbot-Lago; Johnny Claes, 18 seconds off polesitter Farina’s pace in qualifying, was the final classified finisher, six laps behind.

Circumstances vindicated Ferrari’s decision to give Silverstone a miss, for in Monaco the race was thrown into chaos towards the end of the opening lap, when a freakishly large wave breached the balustrade at Tabac and flooded the road. Fangio scampered into a lead he would never give up as Farina spun, taking out eight other cars including team-mate Fagioli. Delayed by the aftermath of the carambolage, Ferrari’s Luigi Villoresi charged back into contention but retired; team-mate Alberto Ascari finished second to Fangio, albeit a lap down.

For the next European round, a thrash around the forest northwest of Bern, Switzerland, Villoresi’s Ferrari was modified to accommodate a de Dion tube set-up in place of the swing-axle rear suspension, but neither of the factory entries finished. Farina and Fagioli finished 1-2 for Alfa, the obligatory lap ahead of third-placed Rosier’s Talbot.

The Belgian Grand Prix represented a passing of the baton as Ferrari modified one of its existing cars to accommodate the 275 engine (make-do-and-mend ruled at Ferrari in this era, so trying to apply modern car-naming conventions or track chassis numbers is an exercise in futility) and Lampredi’s new four-speed gearbox, built in one unit with the limited-slip differential.

Qualifying was less than encouraging as Villoresi, in the supercharged Ferrari, was 10s slower around Spa than polesitter Farina and 5s faster than Ascari’s Lampredi-engined model. Still, Ascari made it to the finish in fifth, a lap down, while the supercharged V12’s final world championship outing in a factory car ended with Villoresi sixth amid a flurry of pitstops.

Gonzales scored maiden Ferrari victory at Silverstone in 1951, triggering flood of emotion from il Commendatore

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Midsummer brought another capitulation, this time at Reims, when the naturally aspirated Ferrari was so slow – relatively speaking – during practice that Enzo pulled his troops out of champagne country before race day, leaving stalwart privateer Whitehead to fly the flag for Maranello. He was rewarded for his persistence with third place when Farina’s fuel pump broke nine laps from the chequered flag.

In the two-month gap before the final round at Monza, Lampredi’s interim 4.1-litre engine – the 340 – was deemed ready and given a run-out in the non-championship Grand Prix des Nations in Geneva. Ranged against four Alfa Romeos, Ascari was second-fastest in the larger-engined Ferrari to Fangio during practice, and ran second to him in the race, albeit with an ever-increasing gap.

Villoresi was running fifth in his 275 until lap 60 of 68, when he hit a patch of oil at speed and spun so violently that he was thrown out of the car, which then careered into a spectator area. Two laps later Ascari trundled into the pits with an expired engine.

By September the definitive 4.5-litre 375 engine was ready, developing a claimed 350bhp at 6500rpm, and it was slotted into two chassis with the de Dion set-up and modified bodywork. Villoresi’s injuries were such that test driver Dorino Serafini had the honour of lining up at Monza alongside Ascari.

Ferrari was outnumbered by Alfa Romeo’s four entries but, for the first time, not outgunned: Ascari qualified 0.2 hand-timed seconds off polesitter Fangio and disputed the early race lead with the fast-starting Farina. Engine failure on the 22nd lap entailed a walk back to the pits, but Ascari then took over Serafini’s car and steadily rose from sixth to second place despite a recalcitrant gearshift.

The final result was perhaps flattered by two of the Alfas suffering mechanical trouble, and overshadowed by Farina being crowned the first world champion, but its significance registered loudly at Alfa Corse’s Portello works.

Over winter, engineering director Orazio Satta Puliga oversaw another major overhaul in which the 158 was rechristened the 159, four new cars were built with de Dion rear axles, and several existing cars modified. An even larger air scoop along the nose signified the presence of bigger superchargers; internally, the adoption of needle roller bearings enabled the engine to reach 10,500rpm, though drivers were instructed to keep this in their pockets for occasional use only. It could reliably produce 420bhp at 9500rpm but its prodigious thirst – 1.6mpg! – required larger fuel tanks, hence the internal paperwork referring to the 159s as fianchi larghi (‘wide hips’). 

Lampredi revised Ferrari’s V12 with twin spark plugs per cylinder ahead of the first world championship race of 1951 but, despite this and improved brakes, it was close-but-no-cigar in the opening three European rounds. Still, a pattern was being established: Alfa winning but with a narrower margin, and fewer cars making it to the flag without incident.

Alfa Romeo driver Kimi Raikkonen gets a history lesson in a 159 at Silverstone in 2019

Photo by: Joe Portlock / Getty Images

In Switzerland, Piero Taruffi brought his 375 home second to Fangio but ahead of world champion Farina; and in France, Alfa made Fagioli swap cars with Fangio to preserve the Argentinian’s championship position after Fangio’s car was delayed with magneto problems.

Silverstone, where Ferrari had avoided defeat a year earlier by not competing, would be the historic transition point. At Reims, Ferrari had entered a fourth car for Jose Froilan Gonzalez equipped with a second-string 12-plug engine; this was the 375 Ascari took over and drove to second place behind Fangio. Despite the inferior equipment, it was Gonzalez who starred at Silverstone, clocking the circuit’s first 100mph average lap in practice and setting pole position ahead of Fangio.

Though both were beaten to the first corner by Fangio’s team-mate Felice Bonetto, Gonzalez briefly seized the lead before the Alfas’ power advantage told and he slipped back to third. Remarkably, the man who had been so nervous ahead of the start that an emergency toilet visit was required now entered a state of calm.

“Mixed in with those tears of enthusiasm were tears of pain because that day, I thought to myself, ‘I’ve killed my mother’” Enzo Ferrari

He overtook Bonetto shortly after Fangio pitted on lap 38 of 100 and led again, ceding it only when he made his solitary stop on lap 48. When Fangio pitted again, Gonzalez led by over a minute – a margin that only shrank as he eased off to preserve his car in the closing laps.

“When Gonzalez and his Ferrari left the 159 and the entire Alfa team in his wake for the first time in the history of our direct clashes, I cried for joy,” Ferrari would later write in his memoir Ferrari 80. “But mixed in with those tears of enthusiasm were tears of pain because that day, I thought to myself, ‘I’ve killed my mother’.”

Alfa’s defeat resonated through the entire motor racing firmament. Back-to-back victories for Ascari at the Nurburgring and Monza not only confirmed the end of Alfa’s supremacy, but also elevated Ascari to the hitherto unexpected status of championship contender. Poor tyre choice by Ferrari in the final round at Pedralbes then proved decisive when its economy advantage was nullified by frequent pitstops to swap wheels.

After this, F1’s first great manufacturer rivalry came to a ragged and inconsequential termination. There would be no rematch in 1952: on 15 February Alfa Romeo’s management met and, in the absence of a government grant to build new cars, decided to withdraw. In the absence of serious competition, race organisers across Europe lobbied for F1 cars to be dropped from world championship rounds.

Enzo, who had a perfectly good Lampredi-designed F2 engine ready to run, could safely mop up any remaining tears of pain. 

Alfa Romeo 158/159 race record

Starts 43
Wins 10
Pole positions 10
Fastest laps 13
Podiums 11
Championship points 163

Specification

Chassis Tubular steel
Suspension Longitudinal links (f), swing axle/de Dion tube (r), transverse leaf springs, hydraulic dampers
Engine Alfa Romeo inline-eight, supercharged
Engine capacity 1479cc
Power 350bhp @ 8500rpm – 420bhp @ 9500rpm
Gearbox Four-speed manual
Brakes Steel drums
Tyres Pirelli
Weight 630-710kg
Notable drivers Giuseppe Farina, Juan Manuel Fangio, Luigi Fagioli

Ferrari 375 race record

Starts 27
Wins 3
Pole positions 3
Fastest laps 0
Podiums 10
Championship points 86

Specification

Chassis Tubular steel
Suspension Double wishbones (f), de Dion tube (r), transverse leaf springs, hydraulic dampers
Engine Ferrari 60-degree V12, naturally aspirated
Engine capacity 4493cc
Power 350bhp @ 7500rpm 
Gearbox Four-speed manual
Brakes Steel drums
Tyres Pirelli
Weight 850kg
Notable drivers Alberto Ascari, Luigi Villoresi, Jose Froilan Gonzalez, Piero Taruffi

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Seventy years after Ferrari’s breakthrough win, Marc Gene demonstrates a 375 at the 2021 British Grand Prix

Photo by: Ferrari