WHEN MASERATI STARTED A SPORTSCAR REVOLUTION
IT ALL STARTED above an ice-cream shop in Maranello. The Maserati MC12, a car that won titles in five consecutive years, claimed three Spa 24 Hours victories in five attempts and came to define its era – and which could have fallen through the cracks of history without Max Mosley’s intervention – started life in a discreet apartment building in 2002.
“The first time we had a meeting with them, basically Maserati Corse was just three guys,” recalls Nicola Scimeca, who headed up the racing version’s development at Dallara. “We went to this residential building and on the label there was‘MC’, which was Maserati Corse, but nobody knew it. That was where they started.”
Prior to 2004, Maserati had been absent from the forefront of international motorsport for many years, its disastrous 1987 World Touring Car Championship assault doing no justice to the storied 250F and Tipo 61 that had gone before. But that all changed when Ferrari assumed control in 1999. Chairman Luca di Montezemolo planned to restore Maserati to its former glory and appointed three trusted lieutenants – Claudio Berro, Giorgio Ascanelli and Maurizio Leschiutta – to lead the new MC division that would turn Ferrari’s Enzo supercar into a GT1 icon in the FIA GT Championship.
“At the beginning it was Giorgio, Claudio Berro and myself,” says Leschiutta, who joined after 13 years on Ferrari’s F1 engine programme. “We were the ones who really believed in this project and were very enthusiastic about it. It was more than a job; it was a vocation we shared.”
But for all the trio’s dedication and the support of Ferrari in developing the production MC12, Maranello’s F1 focus meant another partner was needed to develop the carbonfibre-chassis racer. Enter Dallara. “In-house, we started with three people that were working in an office above an
