Behind the Wheel: Reliving Ferrari's Legendary Le Mans Journey with Luigi Chinetti
Ferrari’s 2023 return to Le Mans came 50 years after its last factory effort, and even longer since it dominated what was its most crucial race. Paul Fearnley looks back at the drivers who secured the glory
Olivier Gendebien (left) and Phil Hill celebrate victory for Ferrari in 1962, even if the Old Man himself was slightly sniffy about his drivers. This was Gendebien’s fourth Le Mans win, all with Ferrari
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Taken from Motor sport online June 2023
So the story goes: Luigi Chinetti, twice a winner of the Le Mans 24 Hours in Alfa Romeos during the 1930s, returns to France in late 1946, having spent the war working in America. His former Paris home is lost. Turning his Citroën southward, he slips and slithers over the Alps to arrive in Modena on Christmas Eve. It is not a cheery place.
He is here to meet old rival/sparring partner Enzo Ferrari. He finds him in his familiar haunt: his eponymous Scuderia’s functional HQ on Viale Trento e Trieste. But whereas once it resonated to revving engines and the banter of rich young men fuelling their need for speed, now it’s dingy and dusty: soulless. An ashen Enzo cuts ghostly and speaks only of past glories.