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by Unknown

  ALBERTO ASCARI

  1950 - 1953

  Alberto Ascari’s record at the Nurburgring is unique: races - 5; wins - 4. And he was winning the fifth by a mile when a wheel came off his Ferrari. He was the first man to complete a hat-trick of victories in the German Grand Prix, a feat equalled only by Juan Manuel Fangio. By the time Alberto made his debut at the Ring in 1950 he had already established himself as one of the world’s finest drivers after barely three seasons of racing. His countrymen were delighting in the fact that their new hero was the son of the great Antonio Ascari, who had driven for Alfa Romeo in the 1920s. In that time Antonio had become friends with Enzo Ferrari, then employed by Alfa Romeo, and it was to him that young Alberto turned in his quest to become a racing driver. Although his father had been killed during the French GP at Montlhery in 1925, Alberto was determined to follow him onto the circuits. He began with motorcycles, first a 500 cc Sertum in 1936 and then with the 500 cc Gileras of Scuderia Ambrosiana, which raced cars and motorcycles. In 1937 he won five races, which brought him an invitation to join Bianchi in 1938, which he did, his success limited more by a lack of petrol due to the political situation, than a lack of skill on his part. In 1940 he set about getting his career as a racing driver started and in doing so was instrumental in getting Ferrari (who had left Alfa Romeo in 1938) embarked on a career as a bona fide constructor. In Ferrari - the Man, the Machines, Peter Coltrin revealed that, ‘In late 1939 Alberto Ascari and a friend approached Ferrari and asked him to build a pair of sports racing cars for them. The twenty-one-year-old Ascari was the son of Ferrari’s late racing driver friend, Antonio Ascari, and with a successful motorcycle racing career behind him, he now wanted to try his hand at four wheels. Ascari’s companion was the Marquis Lotario Rangoni Macchiavelli di Modena, a scion of one of the city’s most distinguished families who had taken part in some local races and whose garage was just up the street from Ferrari’s premises.’ The request was made at a dinner party on Christmas Eve, 1939, and there was some urgency about it as Ascari wanted to race the car in the forthcoming Mille Miglia, to be held on April 28. The race had been banned by the government immediately after the 1938 event, when a car ran into the crowd, killing 10 people and injuring many others. Three weeks later, journalist and racing driver Johnny Lurani suggested reviving the race by running it on a triangular, 100-mile circuit, to be lapped 10 times. In 1940 this idea was taken up (with no credit to Lurani) and the race re-named as II Gran Premio di Brescia, to be run over nine laps of a triangular course from Brescia to Cremona to Mantova and back to Brescia. Enzo Ferrari agreed to Ascari’s request and engineer Alberto Massimino set about designing a car for the 1.5-litre class. A clause in Ferrari’s contract with Alfa Romeo stipulated that he could not put his name on a racing car for some years, so the new machine was known as the Vettura 815 (eight cylinders, 1.5 litres). It was largely based on the Fiat 508C Balilla with a straight-eight engine formed of two Fiat units and clothed in a body styled by Carrozzeria Touring of Milan. Two cars were built and entered in the Gran Premio di Brescia for Ascari and the Marquis, who raced as Rangoni. It would be nice to record a success first time out for the ‘first Ferrari’, but although Ascari led his class for the initial lap, he and Rangoni were both forced to retire soon afterwards. And that was the end of his racing career until the Second World War had been won by the Allies. In 1947 Ascari went to Cairo, of all places, where there was a race for Cisitalias, to be driven by the likes of Louis Chiron, Franco Cortese, Antonio Brivio and Piero Taruffi. Ascari caused quite a stir by finishing second in his Heat to Taruffi and second in the Final behind Cortese. This led to an invitation to rejoin Scuderia Ambrosiana and race its factory-prepared Maseratis. The Scuderia’s number one driver was Gigi Villoresi and the two men quickly became firm friends. That year Alberto won the Circuit of Modena and in 1948 won the San Remo GP and the Coppa Acerbo. He was victorious in the 1949 Buenos Aires GP and then returned to Italy to join Scuderia Ferrari, taking Villoresi with him. By now Ferrari had hired Gioachino Colombo as his Chief Engineer and they decided to race sports and GP cars powered by a V12 engine. Ferrari claimed that this decision was inspired by his admiration for the Packard V12, which he had first seen in a photo of Ralph de Palma’s racer in the 1914 Indianapolis 500. He also remembered that, ‘In the early postwar years I had the opportunity to get a close-up look at the new Packard engines in the magnificent cars of the high-ranking American officers.’ All good, romantic stuff but, as Griffith Borgeson pointed out, Ferrari hated giving credit to others and this was just his way of diverting attention from his real inspiration, the several V12s that Vittorio Jano had designed for Alfa Romeo in the 1930s. Be that as it may, the Ferrari Fl 125 and F2 166 were powered by 1.5- and 2-litre V12s, the figures 125 and 166 denoting the cubic capacity of one cylinder. The Fl car was supercharged, producing 250 bhp @ 7,000 rpm, the F2 car was not, and produced 155 bhp at the same revs. In the absence of Alfa Romeo (which had withdrawn from racing) Ascari drove the Fl cars to victory in the Swiss and Italian GPs and the International Trophy race at Silverstone. And he won the F2 races at Bari and Reims. However, in 1950 the Alfas returned to the fray and Ascari and Ferrari failed to win a single Grande Epreuve in the new World Championship, which was dominated by the Alfa Romeos of Nino Farina and Juan Manuel Fangio, the former becoming the first World Champion. In F2, however, Alberto drove the 166 to victory at Modena, Mons, Rome and Reims before travelling to Germany for his first look at the Nurburgring. The circuit had re-opened with a National meeting the year before and its success prompted the FIA to grant International status to the Automobilclub von Deutschland for 1950. The Club immediately set about organising its first post-war German Grand Prix and, as there were no German Formula One cars (4.5-litres u/s; 1.5-litres s) available, they made theirs a Formula Two race, for 2-litre cars. This allowed a number of German-built machines, such as Veritas and AFM, to take part. After six years of reverberating to the raucous sounds of the Silver Arrows from 1934 to 1939, the Nurburgring garage square sounded (and looked) decidedly different as the cars arrived for the Grand Prix. There was no sign of Mercedes-Benz or Auto Union, but with the old order gone there were works entries from the new, Scuderia Ferrari, Officine Maserati and Equipe Gordini. Entering his first race in Germany as a constructor, Enzo Ferrari sent two 166 models to be driven by Ascari and Dorino Serafini, the latter standing in for Villoresi, who had crashed and injured himself in Geneva. Maserati sent three six-cylinder cars, for the powerful team of Juan Fangio, Froilan Gonzalez and Louis Chiron; there were 1.5-litre Simca Gordinis for Maurice Trintignant, Andre Simon and Robert Manzon and two HWMs for Lance Macklin and motorcycle ace Bob Anderson. However, as Rodney Walkerley remarked in The Motor, ‘The day was full of rather sad, pale ghosts of the past. Caracciola was there, still a semi-invalid after his post-war crash at Indianapolis; Ernst Henne was there; Herr Neubauer, heavier than before, was Chief Starting Marshal and he must have had fits at the general tone of the pit work, and the mobs which surrounded the cars when they came into the pits, von Brauchitsch, obviously much older, was imprisoned in an AFM, with modified BMW engine. The great Hermann Lang had a single-seater Veritas with a single overhead camshaft ex-BMW engine. Hans Stuck, once mountain champion of Europe and Auto Union driver, had a new AFM with a specially-designed V8, twin overhead camshaft engine thought up by motorcycle expert Kucher, and these were the only drivers who had raced on the Ring before.’ Alberto Ascari, of course, had never seen the circuit before, but his remarkable natural ability immediately stamped him as a Ringmeister in waiting. He did 20 laps in a sports Ferrari to find his way around, before climbing aboard his racer and winning pole position with a lap in 10 mins 39.5 secs. Already he was instantly recognizeable by his racing attire, which was all in blue: trousers, open-necked sports shirt (usually with short sleeves) and linen wind helmet, which became a blue hard hat when they became compulsory in 1952. His pole position time was 10 seconds quicker than Simon on the Gordini and 17 s
econds quicker than his team-mate, Serafini. Sadly, of the Maseratis there was no sign, as all three were withdrawn before practice, and the 300,000 spectators who had flocked to their beloved Nurburgring from all over Germany were denied a battle between Ascari and Fangio. The Grand Prix was preceded by a 9-lap sportscar race and then a 6-lapper for 500 cc cars. In The Autocar, Gordon Wilkins noted that, ‘As the Nurburg-Ring is in the French Zone it was fitting that the first post-war international race should end with the playing of the Marseillaise. Germany, being still divided by conquerors who are now divided among themselves, has no national anthem and Reiss’ win (in a Veritas) was celebrated to the haunting strains of a tune called “Ich hab mich ergeben” - “I have surrendered.’” In Fangio’s absence a Ferrari victory was virtually a certainty, just as long as the 166s lasted the distance of 16 laps. Ascari’s did, but Serafini’s did not. He retired after six laps with gearbox failure, but Ascari went serenely on his way, leading by some four miles at one point, before easing up with the race in the bag. But not quite, for on his last lap he slipped a rear wheel over the top of the Karussell’s banked turn and broke many of its spokes. He nursed the Ferrari to the finish, still some twoand-a-half minutes ahead of Andre Simon in the Simca-Gordini. He had also made fastest lap in 10 mins 43.6 secs. The first post-war King of the Nurburgring had ascended to the throne. Two months earlier, Ascari had given the new Fl Ferrari its maiden outing in the Belgian GP at Spa. Aurelio Lampredi had now replaced Colombo at the Scuderia and he and Enzo were agreed that the supercharged V12 of the 125 was too thirsty and unreliable. They decided to go the unsupercharged route and so Lampredi came up with a 3.3-litre V12 that would be enlarged to 4.5 litres for 1951. It was the smaller engine, the 275, which powered Ascari’s car in the Belgian GP and he finished fifth. In 1951 the 4.5-litre 375 began its assault on the invincibility of the supercharged Alfa Romeo 159s. Juan Fangio won the first Grande Epreuve, the Swiss, for Alfa, but Taruffi was second in the Ferrari. Nino Farina (Alfa) won in Belgium, where Ascari was second. For the French GP at Reims the Ferrari team was strengthened by the addition of Jose Froilan Gonzalez. Ascari retired early on and took over Gonzalez’ car to finish second behind Fangio, who had taken over Fagioli’s Alfa. The Alfa domination was finally broken at Silverstone, where Gonzalez scored an historic victory, beating Fangio into second place by almost a minute. Ascari retired with gearbox problems. And so to the Nurburgring, where Ascari lost no time in establishing himself as top dog, taking pole position for the German Grand Prix with 9 mins 55.8 secs. That was just 3.6 secs shy of Hermann Lang’s outright record, set with the Mercedes W154 in the 1939 Eifel GP. Gonzalez and Fangio were both newcomers to the Ring, which didn’t stop them from showing their potential as Ringmeisters by making second and third fastest times with 9’ 57.5” and 9’ 59.0” respectively. Taking fourth spot on the grid was Fangio’s team-mate, Nino Farina (an old hand at the Ring), who recorded 10’ 01.0”. ‘Today is der Tag, der Tag for Germany’s first post-war Formula 1 Grosser Preis.’ wrote Autosport’s correspondent. ‘And what a circuit the cars were to race over! No flat airfield course with characterless straw-baled corners, but the other extreme, a nightmare 14.2 miles of wild-plunging, twisting black tarmac, set in the heart of the Eifel Mountains in West Germany, with every variety of bend from harsh hairpins to flat-out curves; a headlong plunge down the Fuchsrohre followed by right-left-right bends in quick succession, the sharp right-hander at Bergwerk, a long climb to the unique Karussell curve, with its one car’s width of banking, then right, a long left-hander and right again at Hohe Acht, more bends at Brunnchen, a breather through the Pflanzgarten, then the double Schwalbenschwanz (Swallow-tail) and one long, switchback straight running from Dottinger Hohe back to the start, a frightening test for man and machine.’ The anonymous writer clearly did not care for Silverstone! Ascari made a poor start and it was Farina who roared into the lead, followed by Fangio, Gonzalez and Piero Taruffi (Ferrari). Fangio quickly overtook his team-mate and Ascari moved up on Gonzalez. At the end of the opening lap it was Fangio, just 3.4 secs ahead of Ascari, who had Gonzalez close behind him. The second time round and Fangio was 7 secs to the good, but then Ascari carved away at his lead, the Ferrari passing the Alfa Romeo on lap four. Lap six and Fangio stopped for fuel, allowing Gonzalez up into second place and into the lead, briefly, when Ascari stopped at the end of lap nine. Fangio fought his way back to first place on lap 12, but two laps later he had to stop for more fuel and Ascari took the lead once more. After sixteen laps he was 75 sec ahead and apparently cruising to victory, but he then made an unscheduled stop for rear tyres. ‘His pit staff seemed somewhat amazed to see him,’ noted Rodney Walkerley in The Motor, ‘and there was a certain amount of drama before the jack was under the car. However, he was away looking anxiously over his shoulder with about half-a-minute still in hand, and thereafter there was nothing Fangio could do about it.’ Italian journalist Giovanni Canestrini later revealed the reason for this stop. Before the race, Ascari asked him how Nuvolari had beaten the German teams in his famous victory of 1935. Canestrini recounted how Manfred von Brauchitsch had abused his tyres and suffered a blow-out on the last lap as a result. After the race Ascari told Canestrini that as he was well aware of Fangio’s tactic of attacking his rivals at the end of a race he did not want to run the risk of wearing out his tyres, as had happened to von Brauchitsch, when he would have had to react to the pace of his pursuer. “Being certain that I could go as fast as Fangio, I wanted to be in the best condition to beat him.” He was also aware that the very thirsty Alfa Romeos were expected to make two pits stops to the one of the Ferraris, so “I came in because otherwise people would have said that I won because I made only one pit stop. Instead I also made two stops - and one of them a surprise!” Be that as it may, Ferrari’s unsupercharged 4.5-litre cars had inflicted a second stunning defeat on the Alfas. Fangio finished second, but the other Alfas had retired, whereas Ferraris filled the next four places. It was the same result for Ferrari in the Italian GP at Monza, which Ascari won by almost a minute from Gonzalez. Fangio was forced out with a blown piston. The World Championship was now on a knife-edge, as it was to be decided by the best four results from eight races and with just the Spanish GP to come, Fangio led Ascari by two points. Sadly, in an effort to complete the race in Barcelona non-stop Scuderia Ferrari fitted all their cars with small diameter, larger section tyres, which failed to stand up to the weight of fuel and the high speed on the very long main straight. Fangio won convincingly for Alfa Romeo, with Gonzalez (Ferrari) second. Ascari was fourth, two laps behind. So Juan Fangio became World Champion for 1951, with Ascari in second place. The current Formula 1 was due for a change in 1954, when GP cars would have to be powered by engines of 2.5-litres unsupercharged or 750 cc supercharged. However, at the end of 1951 Alfa Romeo decided to retire once again, which left only Scuderia Ferrari with competitive cars in the 4.5-litre u/s/1.5-litre s Formula. The FIA and race organisers very reasonably decided that for 1952 and ‘53 the World Championship should be run for 2-litre F2 cars. Ferrari and Aurelio Lampredi decided to abandon their V12 engines as Lampredi knew that a four-cylinder unit would be lighter and produce more power. His new engine gave 170 bhp as opposed to the 155 of the V12 and the Ferrari 500 became one of the most successful GP cars of all time, dominating the 1952 and ‘53 seasons completely. It must be said that throughout 1952 Alberto faced no real opposition other than his team-mates, for the new Maserati A6GCM only made its debut in the German GP, where its rear axle failed on the opening lap, and it didn’t appear again until the Italian GP in September, by which time Ascari had been World Champion for a month. For the rest, the Gordinis, HWMs and Cooper-Bristols were simply not in the same league as the cars from Maranello. More to the point his biggest rival, Juan Manuel Fangio, crashed and was seriously injured in a non-Championship race at Monza in June and was out of action for the rest of the year. (See Ringmeister 5 - Juan Fangio) Ascari missed the opening Grande Epreuve of the season, the Swiss,
as he was driving a 4.5litre Ferrari at Indianapolis. Less than an hour into the race a rear wheel collapsed and Ascari was out, but he had stunned everyone in qualifying by completing his four laps with less than eight-tenths of a second between the slowest and the fastest. Such consistency was unheard of at the speedway. Alberto came home and won the Belgian and French GPs and then Scuderia Ferrari entered three cars in the German GP for him, Farina and Taruffi. For some reason the organisers were unable to produce any official practice times, but Ascari won pole position with 10 mins 04.9 secs, pretty nifty for a 2-litre car, considering his pole time the previous year in the 4.5 was 9’ 55.8”. That year, 1952, was the Jubilee year of the Nurburgring, so it was appropriate that MercedesBenz, who had won the opening race 25 years earlier, were back and racing again, dipping their toes in competition with sportscars prior to a return to Grand Prix racing. Fresh from their superb victory at Le Mans, the Silver Arrows were in the form of four open 300SLs and were entered for the 10-lap sportscar race. Led by former Grand Prix great Hermann Lang, the team was once again under the command of Alfred Neubauer and it was just like old times at the Ring, as The Autocar noted: ‘When practice finished on Saturday (Mercedes fastest), Herr Neubauer gave a brief signal, the four cars left in procession and the pit was instantly closed and deserted. When the start flag fell on Sunday those four cars shot off in similar fashion - Kling, Riess, Lang, Helfrich - and at the end of ten laps it was Lang, Kling, Riess, Helfrich and Herr Neubauer stolidly buttoning up his jacket, job done. Magnificent: how long before Grands Prix are buttoned up in a similar manner?’ For the Grand Prix, Ascari shared the front row of the grid with Nino Farina (Ferrari) and the Gordinis of Maurice Trintignant and Robert Manzon. Apart from the Ferrari of Piero Taruffi and the Gordini of Jean Behra, the rest of the 30-strong field was made up of private entrants, most of whom were obscure Germans whose entries had been accepted in an effort to bolster the attendance figures. No one offered any threat to Ascari, who simply ran away with the race. After four laps he was one minute ahead of Farina. Next time round he set fastest lap of the race in 10 mins 05.1 secs, then eased back into the 10’ 20”s. On lap 10 he stopped for new rear wheels (but no fuel) and five laps later his lead over Farina was 48 secs. Then, as Rodney Walkerley reported: ‘With two laps to go Drama reared its interesting head with its usual suddenness. Just as we sat back to watch Ascari tour round to win, he screeched to his pit in a ferment of agitation, covered in oil, to have a gallon or so slammed into the tail tank, looking anxiously over his shoulder and unconsciously revving his engine to the red marks while he waited, a Prey to Apprehension. And lo, Farina sailed serenely by while Ascari bit his nails for 33 secs. Now, with two laps to go, Ascari fought for his World Championship points. He tore round that nightmare circuit, sliding the corners left and right, flogging the Ferrari to its limit. The crowds were on their feet shouting. Farina, unruffled and grinning, fled before him, but with an ever-diminishing gap. Ascari had restarted with 10 secs to make up and in that one lap of 14 miles he sliced it off until half-way round he was on Farina’s tail, and he passed him in front of the roaring grandstand. Farina drew level again as they braked for the South Curve, but Ascari deftly swung his car through in a tight sliding turn and led by a length out of the corner.’ Ascari covered his final lap in 10 mins 06.7 secs to win by 14 seconds and become the first man to score a hat-trick of victories in the German Grand Prix. In Autocourse, Corrado Millanta wrote, ‘Many Germans who have studied all the famous drivers on this infernal circuit during these last years consider Ascari to be the greatest of them all. The results themselves are proof enough, but what is more striking is his regularity and sang-froid when the fight is at its most violent. There was a difference of only 7 secs between his average lap speed - excluding, of course, pit stops - and his fastest lap, and remember the circuit is 14.2 miles long.’ As before, the World Championship was decided on the best four results of eight races (which included the Indianapolis 500) and Ascari’s success at the Nurburgring meant that he had won four Grandes Epreuves on the trot, so the title was his. He went on to win the final two races, the Dutch and Italian, giving him an unprecedented six wins in a row. He also set fastest lap in all of them and pole position in five! For 1953 Lampredi left his winning Ferrari well alone, although the 500 now produced close to 190 bhp @ 7500 rpm. However, Maserati emerged as a real threat with the arrival in their midst of Giaocchino Colombo, who set about tweaking the A6GCM into the A6SSG. They also signed a fully recovered Juan Manuel Fangio and his fellow Argentine, Jose Froilan Gonzalez -a formidable pairing of prime, Argentine beef. For its part, Scuderia Ferrari signed the exciting young Englishman, Mike Hawthorn, to join Ascari, Farina and Villoresi. Despite Maserati’s newfound strength the first three Grandes Epreuves of the year fell to Alberto Ascari, whose run of nine consecutive Championship victories remains unequalled fifty years on. The run came to a halt in the French GP, when Mike Hawthorn and Juan Fangio had their legendary duel and Ascari found himself relegated to an unaccustomed fourth place. Order was restored at Silverstone, however, where he won by one minute from Fangio. And so to the Nurburgring, where Alberto Ascari was King. Ferrari sent four cars for Ascari, Farina, Hawthorn and Villoresi. They also sent a 4.5-litre sportscar which all four drivers used in practice in preparation for the very first 1000 Kms race, scheduled for the end of August. Once again Ascari dominated practice, his time on the first day, when the weather was wet and blustery, being a remarkable 10 mins 0.4 secs, which was no fewer than 19.5 seconds faster than the next man, Juan Fangio. On Saturday Ascari put his Ferrari on pole, with a time of 9 mins 59.8 secs. No one else got below 10 minutes, Fangio recording 10’ 03.7”, Farina 10’ 04.1” and Hawthorn 10’ 12.6”. Fangio made the best start, but at the end of the lap it was Ringmeister Ascari who fled past the pits first, 11 secs ahead of Fangio, who had Hawthorn and Farina on his tail. Ascari was flying, and in a class of his own. He completed his second lap in 10’ 02.9”, his third in 10 minutes exactly, his fourth in that plus 2 secs. ‘Ascari was obviously quite uncatchable, his mastery of the Nurburgring being superb,’ wrote Denis Jenkinson in Motor Sport, ‘and he steadily increased his lead by around 10 secs per lap.’ Fangio and Hawthorn were reliving their Reims battle, with Hawthorn having the better of it for the moment but, as Rodney Walkerley noted in The Motor, ‘Then came the drama. Motoring at 150 mph up the finishing straight on his fifth lap, Ascari saw his front right-hand wheel unaccountably detach itself and disappear into the sky with startling speed. Without lifting his foot Ascari kept the three-wheeled vehicle on its course until it sank gracefully on to its brake drum for the next mile. He passed the pits at 80 mph and gently braked to a standstill beyond. A mechanic ran madly with a jack and, thus elevated in front, Ascari reversed to his pit with a brake drum nicely flattened for one third of its periphery, got a new wheel and was off after 4 mins 5 secs, in 9th place, while Hawthorn took the lead a few lengths ahead of Fangio. ‘How the Dickens he kept the car on the road, slumped sideways in front at about 150 mph, took it something over a mile up a hill and round two curves to pull up gently just past the pits is, we thought, more a demonstration of his mastery than even the way he had been galloping away from the rest of the race.’ So now an Englishman was leading the German GP for the first: time since Dick Seaman had done so in 1938. But this race’s surprises were not over yet, for out of the blue Nino Farina began a charge that took him whistling past Fangio and then Hawthorn and into the lead at the end of lap eight, which he covered in 9 mins 59.9 secs. Meanwhile Ascari was once again flying round the Ring, covering his eighth lap even quicker, in 9’ 57.1”, only for Farina to equal that on lap 9. Ascari replied with 10’ 00.6” but, clearly unhappy with the Ferrari’s handling, came into the pits next time round to retire. Team Manager Nello Ugolini immediately flagged in Gigi Villoresi, who was in fourth place, and Alberto went back into the fray. To say that he was fired up at the thought of actually losing a race at his beloved Nurburgring is some understatement.
In Autosport, Gregor Grant wrote, ‘If Ascari’s previous passages were rocket-like, his present ones are meteor-like. It occasions little surprise to wielders of stop-watches to learn that the three-times German GP winner has covered his 12th lap in 9 mins 56.0 secs - a Formula 2 record!’ That would remain the fastest lap of the race. Sadly, it was all too much for the Ferrari. Just when it looked as though Alberto was closing on Hawthorn his engine erupted in a cloud of blue smoke and his day was done. Farina went on to score a superb victory, finishing more than one minute ahead of Fangio in the Maserati and continuing Ferrari’s unbroken run of Championship wins. Ascari won the next GP, the Swiss, clinching his second World Championship. In those two years he and the Ferrari 500 had entered 14 Grandes Epreuves, winning 11 and recording 12 pole positions and 9 fastest laps. There may not have been much in the way of opposition, but you can only beat those who turn up on the day and Ascari’s silken skills and awesome consistency made him a truly great champion. Long-distance sportscar racing came to the Nurburgring in 1953, when the first 1000 kilometre race was held on August 30, with works entries from Ferrari, Lancia and Maserati. Scuderia Ferrari sent two 4.5-litre V12s, an open model with Vignale bodywork for Alberto Ascari/Gigi Villoresi and a Pinin Farina Berlinetta for Nino Farina/ Mike Hawthorn; Lancia sent three V6 D24s (also styled by Pinin Farina), two 3.3-litre machines for Juan Fangio/Felice Bonetto and Piero Taruffi/ Robert Manzon and a 3-litre for Giovanni Bracco/ Eugenio Castellotti. Officine Maserati sent three 2-litre cars for drivers including Hermann Lang, Hans Herrmann and the young Argentine Onofre Marimon. As the 1000 kms was just one week after the Goodwood Nine Hours there were no entries from Aston Martin or Jaguar, although Ecurie Ecosse courageously sent three C-types. Juan Fangio was fastest in practice, taking his D24 round in 10 mins 12.8 secs, while Taruffi recorded 10’ 16.6”. Ascari was fastest of the Ferrari drivers, with 10’ 24.9”, which was not exactly encouraging, as the Lancias were giving away more than a litre to the Ferrari. Worse still, the engine in Alberto’s car broke irrepairably, so the V12 was taken out of the Farina/Hawthorn Berlinetta and dropped into the roadster. It was then decided that Ascari should be partnered by Farina rather than Villoresi, so Gigi and Mike Hawthorn were unemployed. In order to run the whole, 44-lap race in daylight the start was scheduled for 7-30 am. Ascari was first away after the Le Mans run-and-jump and at the end of the first lap he led from Taruffi, with almost 30 seconds passing before the arrival of the Lancias of Fangio and Castellotti. Fangio’s race lasted just four laps before he was sidelined with a failed fuel pump, but the other two Lancias soon overwhelmed Ascari’s Ferrari and then ran away from it. It was not to be Lancia’s day, however, for when both cars stopped to refuel and change drivers at the end of the fifteenth lap they failed to restart, due to flat batteries. As no spare was carried on the cars they had to be withdrawn and the race was handed to Ferrari. Ascari and Farina completed the 44 laps without drama to win the first 1000 kms of the Nurburgring by more than 15 minutes from the Ecurie Ecosse C-type Jaguar of Roy Salvadori and Ian Stewart, Roy gallantly doing most of the driving as Ian had other things on his mind - he was on honeymoon! And that was Alberto Ascari’s last race at the Nurburgring. Early in 1954 he stunned the Italian motor racing world by announcing that he and Gigi Villoresi were leaving Ferrari to join Lancia, Gianni Lancia having decided to enter GP racing after enjoying considerable success with his sportscars. This was the beginning of the new, 2.5-litre Fl and in February Ascari drove the Vittorio Janodesigned Lancia D50 for the first time. Although he was very excited about its prospects it was soon obvious that the car needed a great deal of development before it would be ready to race. Ascari’s hopes of defending his World Championship faded fast, as he had to watch Juan Manuel Fangio win in Argentina and Belgium with a 250F Maserati, until the new Mercedes-Benz W196 was ready in time for the French GP. The D50s were not ready, however, and when Gianni Lancia realised that neither Ferrari nor Maserati had an Italian driver entered for the race, he quickly gave permission for Ascari and Villoresi to join Maserati at Reims. Ascari had not driven a Maserati since winning the Buenos Aires GP in 1949, yet he immediately put his 250F on the front row of the grid, just 1.1 secs slower than Fangio in the streamlined Mercedes. And a fat lot of good it did him, for the transmission failed at the start and he had to sit by the side of the road with Gianni Lancia, watching the Mercedes of Fangio and Kling waltz home to a sensational 1-2 victory. Ascari also drove a Maserati (two, to be precise) in the British GP, but both failed him, so when the time came for the German GP at the Nurburgring, he decided to stay away from his favourite circuit, rather than risk another failure. Ideally, he should have returned to Ferrari for this race, as the Scuderia had crushed Mercedes at Silverstone, but Alberto had burnt his boats with Enzo so he decided to sit this one out. Which was unfortunate for everyone except Fangio, for as long as Ascari had four wheels under him he was unbeatable at the Ring and it must have been intensely frustrating for him to miss that race. Early on in the GP Gonzalez in the Ferrari gave Fangio a very hard time and as Alberto had lapped in 9 mins 56.0 secs with the 180 bhp of the 2-litre Ferrari under his foot in 1953, what might he have achieved with the 230 bhp of the new, 2.5-litre car? He must have had a very good chance of scoring a fifth victory at the Ring. And he might have done just that anyway, had not the ADAC cancelled the second 1000 Kms race shortly after the GP. Ascari had already tested the new, 3.8-litre Lancia D25 there and had reportedly achieved the stunning time of 9 mins 52.0 secs, which was not only 3.1 secs better than Karl Kling’s fastest lap in the recent German GP, but also faster than Hermann Lang’s outright lap record of 9’ 52.2”, set with the supercharged, 3-litre Mercedes in 1939. That testing session was, alas, to be Alberto Ascari’s last visit to the circuit he loved and dominated above all others, for the first post-war King of the Nurburgring was killed while testing a Ferrari sportscar at Monza in May, 1955. His untimely death at the age of 37 left the road clear for Fangio to drive on to immortality. To be sure, he was challenged on occasion by the young pretenders Mike Hawthorn and Stirling Moss, but their victories were few and far between and they never remotely challenged his overall supremacy, which he never possessed so long as Ascari was around. Ascari’s record shows that he was capable of beating Fangio virtually any day of the week but with no Ascari to challenge him, Juan Manuel racked up four World Championships in a row before retiring in 1958 and his outstanding success in the years after Alberto’s death, culminating with that sensational drive in the 1957 German Grand Prix, have undoubtedly overshadowed the Italian’s achievements. Yet in Ascari’s lifetime there were many who considered him to be better than Fangio and observers were referring to him as Maestro long before that accolade was bestowed upon the Argentine. It is worth noting that Fangio declined Gianni Lancia’s invitation to join Ascari in his Grand Prix team and the fact that, had he done so, one of them would have proved to be faster than the other may well have had something to do with it. In the light of Fangio’s god-like reputation today that may seem like heresy, but in 1954 both were in the Lancia sportscar team for two events and whether racing on the wide, aerodrome spaces of Sebring or through the serpentine roads that ran between the hedgerows of Dundrod, Ascari was consistently the quicker and, in the TT, by a considerable margin. Autocourse published the lap times of every car (to seconds only, no tenths) and Ascari’s fastest lap was 4’ 50”, as opposed to Fangio’s 4’ 55”. Alberto Ascari was unquestionably one of the greatest drivers of all time. He excelled on any circuit you care to name and at the Nurburgring, the most demanding of all, he was virtually unbeatable. He won pole position in all four GPs he entered, set fastest lap in three and won three. And he won the first 1000 Kms. If the Nordschleife is a yardstick of a driver’s greatness, then Alberto Ascari has no superiors.