70 Years of Maseratis Double Victory
When you talk about a double victory in today’s motorsport world, you usually mean a win and second place, achieved in the same race by cars of the same make or team. Maserati, on the other hand, achieved a different type of double victory in 1950, which seems impossible from today’s perspective. In fact, Formula 1 is currently celebrating its 70th anniversary, but cannot compete due to the worldwide Corona pandemic. At the beginning of this success story, the regulations for Grand Prix racecars with 4.5-liter naturally aspirated or 1.5-liter supercharged engines were in place, but they were not only applied to races of the newly founded World Championship. Various events also advertised this category and ran their Grand Prixs without the drivers being able to score points for the F1 World Championship.
Such a race took place on 10 April 1950 in Pau, France. About a month before the first race of the World Championship started in Silverstone, various manufacturers were already competing here, including Maserati with their model 4CLT. The development of the 4CLT dates back to 1947. The then chief engineer Alberto Massimino developed a new tubular frame (‘Tubolare’, hence the T in the model name) for the 4CL racing car used until then and helped the four-cylinder engine with 16 valves to more power. In addition, a close-fitting monoposto bodywork from Fantuzzi was added. In this form, the car started for the first time in San Remo, where Alberto Ascari and Luigi Villoresi took the first two places. Two years later, in Pau, Juan Manuel Fangio crossed the finish line first after 110 laps of racing distance.
In addition to the factory cars, Maserati had also been building racing cars for well-heeled customers since the pre-war period. One of them was the haulage contractor Reg Parnell from Derby in the Northern Midlands in Great Britain. In the late 1940s he made a good name for himself with his pre-war model 4CL. He then bought the successor 4CLT, with which he also competed on the Goodwood Motor Circuit on 10 April 1950. There he won the Richmond Trophy, which he had already won the year before. This was the second victory for a Maserati Grand Prix car on the same day. Excitingly, both times it was a 4CLT.
In the following years, Maserati took several victories in the Formula 1 World Championship. In 1954, despite a contract with Mercedes-Benz, Juan Manuel Fangio started the season with a Maserati 250F to increase his chances of winning the championship. He did this impressively with two victories in two races. For various reasons, the racing cars from Stuttgart were only ready for the third race, but their performance enabled Fangio to take another four victories and thus to win the championship. This was the first and only time that a driver won the F1 World Championship on two different brands. After Sir Stirling Moss took second place in the 1956 World Championship, Fangio returned to Maserati in 1957 and immediately won his fifth World Championship title. The 250F, meanwhile, was one of the most widely used Grand Prix cars, competing in 46 world championship races and various other events around the world until 1960. Today it is one of the sought-after rarities of the sports car brand from Modena.
Images: Maserati
