Four Small Wheels 10/2005

A Ferrari Failure - the 121LM by David Blumlein
One of the pleasures for the enthusiasts in the Fifties and Sixties was Ferrari's serious involvement in sports car racing and this intensified with the inauguration in 1953 of the World Sports Car Championship which Ferrari was always keen to win. In fact, the regular diet in those days usually consisted, in the high season, of a Grand Prix one weekend alternating with a major sports car race the other, the drivers thinking nothing of hopping out of single seaters and into the prototypes within a few days - certainly Ferrari kept his drivers fully active in this way! We rightly associate Ferrari with 12-cylinder engines and this is how the marque built up its early reputation but, when Lampredi succeeded Colombo as the chief Ferrari designer, he argued strongly for the development of a twin-cam 4-cylinder which would offer improved torque for the more twisty circuits, as most European venues at the time were. When the big 4 1/2-litre Formula 1 collapsed with Alfa Romeo's withdrawal at the end of 1951, the Grand Prix races were held to a 2-litre formula and Ferrari had anticipated this; history records that Alberto Ascari mopped up the 1952/53 Championships with Lampredi's impressive four. On the sports car side, Ferrari had been building a host of variants using all sorts of combinations of his mechanical hardware and he had succeeded in scooping up the first two Sports Car Championships in 1953 and 1954. For the latter he had created a particularly brutal machine, the 375 'Plus', a 4.9 litre V-12 intended to deal with all-comers. The car had a misleadingly easy debut win at Agadir in February in the hands of Guiseppe Farina but, when it came to the Mille Miglia, both cars crashed, Farina breaking his arm as he hurtled into a tree, Maglioli being more fortunate. It was clear that the car's roadholding left much to be desired and this experience caused Ferrari to restrict their future use to the very fast circuits, Gonzalez & Trintignant's win at Le Mans in 1954 being its notable achievement (although the Argentinian was sent to Silverstone for the short 'Daily Express' race in May where he duly obliged with a convincing win). Basically the car was too heavy and unmanageable.	As 1954 progressed Ferrari had two thoughts on his mind: the Mercedes Benz return to Grand Prix racing that season had been stunning, allowing Ferrari just two 'grande épreuve' wins when the Stuttgart team had a hiccup - Gonzalez at Silverstone and Hawthorn in Barcelona, both four-cylinder powered. It was known that Mercedes were developing a 3-litre sports car version of the W196 GP car and this sounded some alarm bells in Maranello. In fact a prototype had run under Ferrari's nose at Monza where it clocked 180 m.p.h., lapping half a second faster that the lap record set by Gonzalez in the Formula 1 Ferrari at the Italian Grand Prix. Ferrari was thus experimenting with the idea of the 6-cylinder version of the current four G.P engine and this line of thinking spawned the idea of a straight-six version for sports car races, it being felt that the 3-litre Monza would stand no chance against the German might. The 1955 season turned out to be an odd and unsuccessful chapter in Ferrari's glorious history. Initially Ferrari decided to add two cylinders to the 2.5 litre 625 Grand Prix engine and this gave us the 118LM sports-racer, a 3.7 litre straight-six with a 5-speed gearbox in unit with the differential coupled to a de Dion rear end suspended on a transverse leaf spring. Scaglietti was commissioned to make the bodies, Enzo preferring Franco's design, and the car was sent to Argentina for the opening round of the championship at Buenos Aires. Gonzalez and Trintignant went well but the Argentinian took a short cut back to the pits and this incurred disqualification. Pierro Taruffi took what was to be the six-cylinder car's only win in Europe in the Tour of Sicily but, when three 118LM cars lined up for the Mille Miglia, they were joined by a new variation, the 121LM. This 4.4 litre car used the 3-litre Monza engine with two more cylinders, and was entrusted in the race to Eugenio Castellotti, effectively on loan from Lancia where racing activities were on the point of collapse.

This was the race in which Stirling Moss made history with his win for Mercedes in the 300SLR but the new Ferrari tore off at an average of 120 m.p.h to Verona, in true Castellotti Latin fashion, but the tyres cried enough and blew causing too much damage for the car to continue. Marzotto in his six suffered similar tyre maladies, Taruffi held the lead before retiring with oil pump failure while the ever reliable Maglioli managed to finish third behind the triumphant German cars of Moss and Fangio.

For Le Mans, which had the ingredients for an outstandingly competitive race, Ferrari sent three of the new 121LM straight-sixes in an endeavour to stamp Italian superiority not only over the Germans but of course the competitive D-Type Jaguars, the English firm making the French classic the supreme target of its racing activities. The race turned out to be the biggest and saddest tragedy in the entire history of motor-racing when the 'invited' driver Pierre Levegh collided with Macklin's Austin-Healey on the approach to the pits, the Mercedes flying into the crowded spectator enclosure where it disintegrated with appalling consequences.

The race was a disaster for the straight-six Ferraris as well, albeit of a minor nature compared with what had happened. During the Friday practice Castellotti had taken car no.4 (chassis 0532) round some four seconds quicker than the leading Mercedes contender of Fangio/Moss, itself two seconds faster than the eventual winning Jaguar of Hawthorn/Bueb. And in one race, the usual Italian 'Grand Prix Start' characterised the opening laps with Castellotti seemingly oblivious of the fact that the car had to last twenty-four hours! By lap 16 Hawthorn and Fangio had displaced the red Ferrari which held on to third by six o'clock, just prior to the disaster, but dropped back to seventh before retiring in the fifth hour with apparent engine failure.

Meanwhile his team-mates Maglioli and Phil Hill (car no.3, chassis 0558) held third at eight o'clock but they too dropped back when the radiator was pierced eventually retiring with clutch failure, transmission a common Ferrari weekness in those days. Trintignant and Schell (car no.5, chassis 0546) were never in contention, moving up from fifty-fourth place to 9th by the seventh hour but dropping to tenth before retiring with overheating - a totally calamitous performance!
The 121LM had one more 'works' outing in its history, Castellotti going to Sweden where the bumpy circuit prevented it from challenging the all-conquering Mercedes, a third place picking up at least some championship points.
The Commendatore was disillusioned and the cars were sold off, 0546 going to America for Ernie McAffee who ran it in Californian events, eventually killing himself in it, and 0532 was given a modified nose for Jim Kimberley to try to overcome the tendency to overheat. Property magnate Tony Parravano commissioned a specially-bodied car (0484) - he liked his cars to be different! - and sent Carroll Shelby to the 'Daily Herald' race at Oulton Park in August; needless to say, it did not respond well to the twisty Northern circuit, after which it was sent back to Italy for modification before going out the inaugural Venezuelan sports car Grand Prix where Maglioli retired with overheating. A car was ordered by von Neumann and that too ran at Caracas but Phil Hill withdrew with ... overheating!
Some minor successes came with these American-based cars in the following years but, in terms of Ferrari history, the 121LM must be classified an ignominious failure. Yet during the Fifties no less than seven of the Le Mans races were won with straight-six engines. Perhaps with all their racing activities there was just not enough time for Ferrari to develop so many different engines and cars sufficiently. Anyway, Ferrari went back to his beloved V-12s very soon and tasted more success!