Marque honours even on home ground

The closing races in the shell Historic Ferrari Maserati Challenge played to a big crowd at Monza in late October, although torrential rain hit the final race of the opening day. As ever, the cars were divided into races for single-seaters and sportscars, with the sportscars split into disc brake and drum brake models.

Peter Hardman (Ferrari 246P) and Bernd Hahne (Maserati 450S) took the spoils in Saturday’s sportscar races. Frederico della Noche (250LM) and Jean Guikas (512M) both led the disc brake race in the early laps, but a spin by Guikas left the way clear for Hardman to win from Frederico Kroymans (250 GTO). On Sunday, Guikas made amends, winning convincingly.

Hahne had to see off the battling duo of Irvine Laidlaw (Maserati 2505) and Burkhard von Schenk (300S) to win the first of the drum brake races.

It was a case of more of the same in the second race, although von Schenk got the better of Laidlaw after another entertaining battle.

Laidlaw was also at the centre of the contest for the single-seater race on Sunday (the previous day’s race had been rained off) in his Maserati 6CM. He battled hard against the F2 Ferrari Dino of Corrado Cupellini, but finally had to settle for second after a late-race spin.