Friday's Ferrari

This is one of the Donington Park Museum's most long-standing exhibits, from its early days in the late 1970s to its closure in 2018. I took this photograph on my last visit there in September 2014.

It's a 1952 Ferrari 500, and the book 'Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection' says this about it:

Ascari’s Ferrari

The World Championship ‘500’

When Juan Manuel Fangio won his first Word Championship title for Alfa Romeo in 1951 it signalled the end of their Grand Prix dominance. They withdrew to rest on their numerous laurels and thus competition in Formula 1 virtually died. So the Grand Prix organisers and the international governing bodies of the sport decreed that Championship-status races in 1952 and 1953 would be run for unsupercharged 2-litre Formula 2 machinery. Ferrari, typically, had just such a car immediately available in race-winning form. This was the four-cylinder, twin-overhead camshaft Tipo 500 – the classification being taken from the cubic capacity in cc of each cylinder. This unit had been designed by engineer Aurelio Lampredi, the man who had brought Ferrari success with the unsupercharged 4½-litre V12 cars and, in a straightforward twin-tube chassis frame with transverse leaf-spring independent front suspension and a rear De Dion axle, it brought the team two consecutive World Championship titles in the hands of Alberto Ascari. Burly and amiable, he was the son of the great Alfa Romeo driver Antontio Ascari who had been killed in an Alfa Romeo in 1925 when leading the French Grand Prix at Montlhéry. Alberto began racing motor-cycles in 1937, made his four-wheeled debut in the Ferrari-built ‘815’ of 1940, and after scoring many successes with Maseratis appeared in Ferrari GP cars in 1949. The World Championship started in 1950, and in 1951 Ascari was runner-up to Fangio. In the Formula 2 World Championship races of 1952-53 he became virtually unbeatable, winning every race he started (six of them) the first season and five of his eight starts the second. The only major Grand Prix he did not contest in 1952 fell to Piero Taruffi in another Ferrari 500, and in 1953 English newcomer Mike Hawthorn won for Ferrari in France and Dr Farina for them in Germany. It took Fangio to break Ferrari’s stranglehold on the Formula by winning the last 2-litre race, in Italy. To this magnificent success story had to be added non-Championship race wins at Syracuse, Marseilles, Saint-Gaudens, La Baule, Pau and Bordeaux – all for Ascari – and when the 500s were beaten it was big news. Maserati were overjoyed by their Monza success, and in 1952 at Reims the little Gordini team had enjoyed one of their finest hours, when Jean Behra led the Ferrari fleet to the line. The Donington Collection’s Ferrari 500 is No. 5, which was the car most often used by Ascari himself in the major Grand Prix races. Just which races it won is unclear, but it is certain that this is one of the most successful individual chassis In Grand Prix history. Only one other chassis is currently capable of challenging it, and that is the Jackie Stewart Tyrrell 003, which won eight Grand Prix races – of a much shorter duration – in 1971-72. Ferrari No. 5 was sold to Tony Gaze for the 1954 Tasman races in New Zealand and Australia, where it raced with a 3-litre 4-cylinder engine installed, akin to the sports-car 750S unit. Gaze ran as team-mate to Peter Whitehead in a similar car and after a successful tour the immaculate 500 was sold to Australian amateur driver Lex Davison. In his hands it became one of Australia’s best-known, best-loved and most successful racing cars, until it was brought back to England in the mid-1960s. It has been completely restored to original trim, although the 3-litre engine is still installed. With such an impressive racing record, this Ferrari is one of Donington’s proudest exhibits.