Scuderia Ferrari

Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 Scuderia Ferrari
Scuderia Ferrari was founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929 to enter amateur drivers in various races. Ferrari himself had raced in Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali and Alfa Romeo cars before that date. The idea came about on the night of 16 November at a dinner in Bologna, where Ferrari solicited financial help from textile heirs Augusto and Alfredo Caniato and wealthy amateur racer Mario Tadini. He then gathered a team which at its peak included over forty drivers, most of whom raced in various Alfa Romeo 8C cars; Ferrari himself continued racing, with moderate success, until the birth of his first son Dino in 1932. The prancing horse blazon first appeared at the 1932 Spa 24 Hours in Belgium on a two-car team of Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Spiders, which finished first and second.

In 1933, Alfa Romeo experienced economic difficulties and withdrew its team from racing. From then, the Scuderia Ferrari became the acting racing team of Alfa Romeo when the factory released to the Scuderia the up to date Monoposto Tipo B racers. In 1935, Enzo Ferrari and Luigi Bazzi built the Alfa Romeo Bimotore, the first car to wear a Ferrari badge on the radiator cowl. Ferrari managed numerous established drivers (notably Tazio Nuvolari, Giuseppe Campari, Achille Varzi, and Louis Chiron) and several talented rookies (Mario Tadini, Guy Moll, Carlo Maria Pintacuda, and Antonio Brivio) from his headquarters in Viale Trento e Trieste, Modena, Italy, until 1938, at which point Alfa Romeo made him the manager of the factory racing division, Alfa Corse. Alfa Romeo had bought the shares of the Scuderia Ferrari in 1937 and transferred, from 1 January 1938, the official racing activity to Alfa Corse whose new buildings were being erected next to the Alfa factory at Portello, Milan. The Viale Trento e Trieste facilities remained active to assist the racing customers.

Enzo Ferrari (first from left), Tazio Nuvolari (fourth), and Achille Varzi (sixth) with Alfa Romeo managing director Prospero Gianferrari (third) at Colle Maddalena
Enzo Ferrari disagreed with this policy change and was dismissed by Alfa in 1939. In October 1939, Enzo Ferrari left Alfa when the racing activity stopped and founded Auto Avio Costruzioni Ferrari, which also manufactured machine tools. The agreement with Alfa included the condition that he would not use the Ferrari name on cars for four years. In the winter of 1939–1940, Ferrari started work on a racecar of his own, the Tipo 815 (eight cylinders, 1.5 L displacement). The 815s, designed by Alberto Massimino, were thus the first true Ferrari cars. After Alberto Ascari and the Marchese Lotario Rangoni Machiavelli di Modena drove them in the 1940 Mille Miglia, World War II put a temporary end to racing and the 815s saw no more competition. Ferrari continued to manufacture machine tools (specifically oleodynamic grinding machines). In 1943, he moved his headquarters to Maranello, where it was bombed in November 1944 and February 1945.

Rules for a Grand Prix World Championship had been discussed before the war; it took several years afterwards for the series to become active. Meanwhile, Ferrari rebuilt his works in Maranello and constructed the 12-cylinder, 1.5 L Tipo 125, which competed at several non-championship Grands Prix. The car made its debut at the 1948 Italian Grand Prix with Raymond Sommer and achieved its first win at the minor Circuito di Garda with Giuseppe Farina. After the four-year condition expired, the road car company was called Ferrari S.p.A., while the name SEFAC (Società Esercizio Fabbriche Automobili e Corse) was used for the racing department.

The team was based in Modena from its pre-war founding until 1943, when Enzo Ferrari moved the team to a new factory in Maranello in 1943, and both Scuderia Ferrari and Ferrari's road car factory remain at Maranello to this day. The team owns and operates a test track on the same site, the Fiorano Circuit built in 1972, which is used for testing ro

The team was based in Modena from its pre-war founding until 1943, when Enzo Ferrari moved the team to a new factory in Maranello in 1943, and both Scuderia Ferrari and Ferrari's road car factory remain at Maranello to this day. The team owns and operates a test track on the same site, the Fiorano Circuit built in 1972, which is used for testing road and race cars.

^ Henry, Alan (1989). Ferrari – The Grand Prix Cars (2nd ed.). Hazleton. p. 13.

The team is named after its founder Enzo Ferrari. Scuderia is Italian for a stable reserved for racing horses, and is also commonly applied to Italian motor racing teams. The prancing horse was the symbol used on Italian World War I ace Francesco Baracca's fighter plane. It became the logo of Ferrari after the fallen ace's parents, close acquaintances of Enzo Ferrari, suggested that Ferrari use the symbol as the logo of the Scuderia, telling him it would "bring him good luck".

^ "Scuderia − Dizionario italiano-inglese WordReference". Wordreference.com. Retrieved 11 February 2024.

^ "The prancing horse". Museo Francesco Baracca. Archived from the original on 7 February 2019. Retrieved 30 January 2016.