Sportscar Racing
From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, Ferrari competed in sports car racing with great success, winning the World Sportscar Championship 13 times. Ferrari scored early successes in sportcars, taking wins in the 1950 and 1951 Mille Miglia, although the 1951 vistory resulted in a lengthy litigation when Ascari crashed through a barrier and killed a local doctor.
In 1953, the World Sportscar Championship was established, and Scuderia Ferrari along with other manufacturerers such as Aston Martin, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar began to enter multiple factory backed cars in races such as the Le Mans 24 Hours. Ferrari launched a large range of sports racers over the next three years. This included the traditional compact V12-powered 166 MM and 250 MM, the larger V12 290, 340, and 375 MM and 315, 335, and 410 S, the four-cylinder 500, 625, 750, and 860 Monzas, and the six-cylinder 118 and 121 LM. With this potent lineup, Ferrari was able to claim six of the first seven WSC titles: 1953, 1954, 1956, 1957, and 1958.
This sportscar championship included road races such as the Carrera Panamericana in Mexico, Mille Miglia in Italy and the Sicilian Targa Florio. Ferrari cars (including non-works entries) won the Mille Miglia eight times, the Targa Florio seven times, and the 24 hours of Le Mans nine times. Throughout the 1960s, Ferrari were a dominant force in sportscar racing, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans 6 years in a row from 1960 to 1965.
With the introduction of the Sports Protoypes class, Ferrari developed the P series, but 1970s were to be the last decade Ferrari entered as a works effort in sports car racing. After an uninspired performance in the 1973 F1 World Championship, Enzo Ferrari stopped all development of sports cars in prototype and GT racing at the end of the year, in order to concentrate on Formula One.
Ferrari cars were raced in a range of classes such as GT Racing by other entrants, but not by the factory Scuderia Ferrari team. In the 1990s, Ferrari returned to Sports prototypes as a constructor with the 333SP with some success, although Scuderia Ferrari itself never raced this car.
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Famous quotes containing the word racing:
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)