Statistics tell us that in the grand prix seasons of 1952 and ’53, Ferrari and Alberto Ascari were the preeminent forces, winning two world championships in a row for both maker and driver. Ascari won an incredible seven championship grands prix in a row, indeed nine if we overlook Indianapolis, which in those days counted for world points. The driver was a marvel, a man of phenomenal talent and determination, in spite of anxieties driven by superstition. But he also had the benefit of being an exceptional racecar.
Ascari’s dominant performance traced its origins back to a Sunday in early June of 1951. Ferrari engineering director, Aurelio Lampredi, was in his office at Maranello, as usual, when Enzo Ferrari reached a conclusion. The two men had been debating the sort of power unit to build for the coming 1954 Formula 1, which permitted 2.5-litre unsupercharged engines. Such an engine could serve in the meantime, they surmised, as a 2.0-litre F2 unit.
The pair initially considered uprating to 2.0-litres their failed supercharged, 1.5-litre, four-cam V12, the work of Lampredi’s predecessor, Gioachino Colombo. Indeed, they built and tested just such an engine, but that was a heavier solution when lightness and agility were what was needed (in 1950, John Heath’s Alta-engined HWMs had pressed the works team of 2.0 litre Ferrari V12s, and had done so with only four cylinders).
Enzo Ferrari grasped Lampredi’s idea that a four-cylinder engine had torque and weight characteristics well suited to the twisty street circuits that predominated in European racing. For Ferrari, this was a daring concept after the success he had enjoyed with his 12s. What may have helped persuade him was he was well aware that arch rival, Maserati, was at the time in the process of developing a
