Auto Racing: Another for the Monster

The proudest marque in auto racing is the rearing black stallion insignia on the hood of an Italian Ferrari. “Racing amuses me,” says Enzo Ferrari, 65, a brooding, irascible genius whose rivals call him “the Monster of Maranello.” At his plant near Modena, he turns out some 750 marvelously hand-crafted sports cars each year, the cheapest of which sells for $8,800. And when he puts them on the track, the customers are properly impressed. Last year, a Ferrari won the twelve-hour Grand Prix of Endurance at Sebring, Fla. A Ferrari won Sicily’s Targa Florio. A Ferrari won Germany’s 1,000 Kilometers of Nurburgring, and a Ferrari won France’s Twenty-four Hours of Le Mans. It was a clean sweep of the world’s four top sports-car races,* and, for Enzo Ferrari, his eighth manufacturer’s world championship in ten years.

All Sizes. This year’s amusement is already in high gear. Back to Sebring came the Ferraris, eleven of them, hidden away in an airport hangar, where brown-coveralled mechanics tinkered lovingly with valves and fuel pumps. They came in all shapes and sizes, from a twelve-cylinder, 420-h.p. experimental car to a 340-h.p. gran turismo, a first cousin of the one that Desi Arnaz tools around Hollywood. Behind these wheels was an international Who’s Who of racing: Scotland’s Innes Ireland, Mexico’s Pedro Rodriguez, the U.S.’s Roger Penske, Britain’s John Surtees had a 340-h.p. roadster and mustachioed Graham Hill, the 1962 Grand Prix champion, was to drive a prototype Ferrari that boasted a separate carburetor for each of its twelve cylinders. “Our only enemies,” boasted Luigi Chinetti Sr., manager of Ferrari’s North American Racing Team, “are ourselves.”

That was impolite, to say the least. Britain’s Jaguar was represented by four of its new droop-snoot E-type cars; Germany’s Porsche entered five cars—and then there were the U.S. challengers. After years of listening to those cracks about “Detroit Iron,” both Chevrolet and Ford were on hand—and obviously yearning for a U.S. victory.

In years past, Chevy’s Corvette sports car could hardly stay on the same track with a serious-minded Ferrari. But the 1963 Corvette Sting Ray is new from its independent rear suspension to its fastback body shell. On a casual test lap, a Sting Ray zipped around the twisting, 5.2-mile Sebring course in 3 min. 12 sec. —beating the official track record set by Ferrari last year. Then came Ford with the hybrid AC Cobras, developed by ex-racer Carroll Shelby, with a light British body hiding a huge 350-h.p. Ford engine. The Cobras claimed to be even faster.

Ford and Chevrolet mechanics hovered anxiously over the cars; cartons of fresh-from-the-factory parts were piled against garage walls. Indianapolis 500 Winner A. J. Foyt was driving a Sting Ray. In the Cobras were such aces as Glenn (“Fireball”) Roberts, the stock-car champion, and Phil Hill, who won the 1961 Grand Prix title.

One Lap. At the explosive start, six Cobras and seven Sting Rays blasted off to give Enzo Ferrari and his crew a lesson. Coming around the first lap—glory of glories—there was Phil Hill in a Cobra leading the pack. Past the grandstand and into the turn—and then a Ferrari was chewing angrily at Hill’s tailpipes. That was it. One Ferrari passed, then another, nimbly dancing around the low-gear turns, accelerating up to 160 m.p.h. in a bellow of raging sound. Hill clung to third place with his Cobra for two hours before going in for brake repairs; another Cobra lasted six hours before the steering needed work. Three other Cobras went out altogether with mechanical failures: a broken rocker arm, broken baffles. At the nine-hour mark, a Corvette Sting Ray surprised everyone by edging into fifth place, and then blew its engine. Three others were already in the pits, and the remaining three cars were far back.

By dusk, more than a third of the 63-car field was out. Even Ferrari felt the strain of a wrenching course that requires 28 gear shifts each lap. One Ferrari retired with a split gas tank, another fell victim to a broken suspension. But the other nine were all running, and it seemed like a parade. At the 10 p.m. finish, Britain’s John Surtees was in first place in his rear-engined Ferrari after completing 1,086 miles in twelve hours for a 90.4-m.p.h. average. Behind him were five more Ferraris in a blaze of Italian racing red. The first Cobra to finish was in 11th place, the first Corvette in 16th. Flushed with victory, a Ferrari official confidently predicted: “We’ll win every sports-car race this year.”

* By rule, a sports car must have fenders, headlights, a passenger seat and a top, none of which a Grand Prix car has. In practice, though, the “passenger seat” is usually just a piece of aluminum, and the “top” is a flap of canvas —except in “grand touring” cars, which are hardtop coupés.