The participation of Ferrari at Le Mans started in 1949 when Ferrari the company was but two years old, though Ferrari the man was already in his fifties. But it is another man, Luigi Chinetti, who was the dominant figure in Ferrari’s early 24-hour campaigns in France. Already a double Le Mans winner (in 1932 and 1934 in Alfa Romeos), and then agent for Ferrari in France and the USA, he made it his business to establish Ferrari as one of the names in what was already regarded as one of the world’s greatest long-distance races.

That year he drove a 166MM with Peter Mitchell-Thomson, better known as Lord Selsdon, though in truth illness prevented the latter from playing a meaningful role in the race. It was left to Chinetti, himself no spring chicken at nearly 48, to drive 22 hours solo against a field mainly comprising Delages and Delahayes with far larger engines than the little 2-litre V12 at his command. But his was a flawless performance, winning the class, the race and the Index of Performance some 17 years after his first Le Mans win, a feat to this day matched only by Hurley Haywood (1977-94) and beaten by none. Chinetti would race Ferraris in the next four Le Mans, emerging with one eighth-place finish in 1951 as his only meaningful result.