On This Day

Sunday 5th October 1919

100 years ago

On this day, 21-year-old Enzo Ferrari made his racing debut, finishing 11th in the Parmo-Poggia di Berceto hill climb in a Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali (CMN) vehicle. Ferrari became a professional driver after World War I, and joined the CMN in Milan as a test and racing-car driver in 1919. The following year, Ferrari moved to Alfa Romeo, establishing a relationship that lasted two decades and a career that took him from test driver to the director post of the Alfa Racing Division. In 1929, he founded the Scuderia Ferrari, an organization that began modestly as a racing club, but by 1933 had entirely taken over the engineering-racing division of Alfa Romeo. In 1940, Ferrari transformed the Scuderia into an independent manufacturing company, the Auto Avio Costruzioni Ferrari, but construction of the first Ferrari vehicle was delayed until the end of World War II. In 1947, the Ferrari 125S was introduced to the racing world, and it won the prestigious Coppa Enrico Faini in the same year. Thus began an impressive 40 years of racing success under the leadership of Enzo Ferrari, a tradition that saw Ferrari vehicles earn more than25 world titles, and win over 5,000 events at race tracks around the world.